A bit about my current state

My room is a horrible mess. I haven't cleaned properly in months. I feel a little bad about it, but I never feel the need to clean. It's not a good thing that I willingly eschew cleanliness, but for some reason it just doesn't seem that important.

Even last night when I had people over it didn't seem a big deal to me. That's the thing. I just don't want to do any of these things I'm responsible for. Or maybe it's more like I have a pool of resources I can put towards anything and cleaning my room just isn't one of the things I choose to put resources towards.

That would make sense to me. I've been doing a lot more music lately, and it's been pretty good by my accounting. I've also been getting on top of the stuff I need to do for my job. And then there's school. I've been rather good about that as of late. I just don't have the extra resources to get to cleaning my room, or sorting out my clothes.

That's probably not a good thing, but I think I'm operating on the same schedule as I was when off of my meds, and it doesn't apply to my medicated state. That may be part of it. I'm much better with my meds, nicer, better to be around, less snappy, less negative, less wild. They're definitely a good thing for me, I just need to get used to them.

It's not just that either, I have to get used to a whole different life and figure out if I'm comfortable with just doing the routine things that each of us does every day. I don't know if I feel like the way the world is structured suits me. I don't want to live in the confines of habit. The routines I feel I need to go through stifle me. For all my desire to understand the human brain to a greater degree, for all my desire to explore the things that make us human, sometimes I just want to quit it all and play music. Sometimes I want to say fuck it, and just write books, songs and poems. Sometimes all of this is too much.

Of course the drugs make me realise a bit more fully the weight that a routine puts on ones shoulders. I've even had to justify the taking of them to myself. I'm taking them to avoid depressions, and to perhaps lengthen my life by preventing a possible (hell considering statistics on the subject among people sharing my disorder, likely) suicide. I'm not taking them to become a productive member of society. I'm not taking them so that I can work and be prosperous, I'm taking them to save my life.

That's a pretty profound difference. They're being prescribed to allow me to fit into society, but I don't need to fit in, in fact I'd much rather not fit in. I'm taking them to fit in or not fit in on my own terms. To a certain extent it's the same as my hindsight justification for the short time for which I could have considered myself a smoker. Cigarettes in some way helped me cope with the shittyness of life, and for all that they very well may have shortened my life by a few months or a few years, they have, by preventing my just giving up, given me back many more.

Right now for me is a time for rediffining of terms. Who am I? I don't know anymore, but I'm working on it. I am not someone who wants to be subject to the greater trends of society, and anytime I see myself doing something just because it's what has always been done, I feel a little bit of myself die. So far that and my desire to create have been the only certain things. I want to create, and even though society doesn't value my music or my writing the way they value the creation of pointless monetary assets, I want to continue as if what I do is the most important thing there is.

That's all I'm really sure off, but I guess that's a lot. I have to resources to do those things I want to as well, so I'm not so bad off. I just need to figure out the rest, through song, and writing. Maybe I'll find out and I can tell everyone who I am, but with this being a completely new experience and the fact that I'm always changing even if only a little bit, It may be rather hard to do.

the weather and my writing style.

The weather has taken a nasty turn. I'd rather it just rained instead of threatening with big grey clouds and cool winds. Waiting for the other shoe to drop is never something I've been a fan of. I've spent enough time waiting for things to go wrong, or turn for the worse in my normal life, I don't usually like it for weather.

The weather metaphor is used a lot for bipolar disorder. It's a pretty accurate one. The clouds roll in and it threatens to rain before a torrent falls down. The same happens with manias, where you've those days where the sun just peeks out from the clouds and it's still cold out. It's like the lead up.

Oddest thing, I'm imagining this read in an English accent. I tend to write in a way that just sounds better read out loud in an english accent. I can do it in the Irish but that's not quite how I write. I don't really know why it sounds so much better to me when it doesn't sound estado unidensen. I've never been comfortable with being from the US, and that may just be part of it.

I've always had trouble figuring out where my writing style comes from because I've all these influences that aren't connected to where I'm from. I spent too much time reading books of all different sorts. I spent too much time in Japan, and I spent too much time wishing I weren't from the part of northern California I was from.

That irks me a bit. It's not necessarily of importance enough to blog about, but in actuality, what is?

My current band and music

You all should go over to www.mattsevrens.com to see the music my new band has been making. It's catchy, and unusual. I think people will like it. So do check it out. it's not the stuff that I've written that musical philosophy stuff about. It's not my Post chordalism, or musical pointalism or whatever. It's folky pop with clever lyrics.

Do check it out. If you enjoy it let me know. Perhaps I'll post more if there is interest.

finnally my computer has been fixed.

My computer has been fixed. I'm so tempted to yell that, with my lovely caps lock key. I rather missed her. The thing is, turns out I use the computer far more than I had thought. It's almost like most of the easily kept social ties are on the internet now. It's a good and bad thing. It's good for my gas consumption, and bad for keeping my body in biking shape. It's good for my introverted but people loving people loving persona, but bad for the actually people I love.

I'm ambivalent about how much of my life, and the lives of others, centre around computers, but as far as action is concerned, I'm unlikely to change my direct involvement with said devices.

Something I'm sort of surprised to have missed is posting on this blog. I had been doing so every day, and it had been quite a release. I just didn't realise how much until I no longer had it at my fingertips. That gave me time to sit and handwrite part of the memoirs I'm working on, but handwriting is a practice in passion not in work ethic. I am a shite editor when it comes to handwritten works, and transposing them to my primary mode of wirting, my computer is always a troublesome endeavour. I'm not overly worried about that transition, but it will be a large amount of additional work over the editing and rewriting. One of my friends said it takes at least five years to write a good memoir. All that made me think of was the David Bowie song "five years", but she's right about one thing. Perhaps not the time in particular but certainly the fact of a long time being needed. I'd say more like two or three years, but on never fully knows. I would find it interesting to have it take 3 years, so that it's about as long as the primary time of focus.

But that's enough mulling. For now I'm just happy to have my computer back and my blog back and my connection to the rest of the world (well my non physical connection to it at least) back.

Rather pleased if you couldn't tell.

I'm working on a paper right now. I felt like writing but no longer felt like writing my paper, so while I've use of a computer I've decided to once again post on this lovely page of mine.

My teeth have been hurting me. I rather hate dental work, despite realising it's necessity. The thing that most bothers me is the ability of dental problems to remove all other thoughts from ones brain. If my teeth hurt I'm unlikely to be thinking about anything else. That occurs in a lot of different cases, but because my teeth hurt I'm having trouble thinking of anything else.

The paper I'm working on is titled "Madness and Meaning: Mental Illness and the Essentialist Turn" That sentence is rather hard because the shift key on this shitty school keyboard keeps sticking. I have to make a serious amount of effort to press it again and again. It leaves me tempted to not capilatise anything. That of course is a bad idea, but I can't seem to shake it nonetheless.

Not having a computer seriously puts a damper on my existence. There are plenty of things my computer is good for, and without it I realise again how much time I spend using it. It's usually just in passing, for the listening of music, or the reading of blogs and articles, but without it my life is significantly different. I write on notebooks for hours, giving my hand these uncomfortable cramps that I try to get rid of by massaging my hand while watching television. I don't like my life without a computer. Typing is a hugely useful thing for me. My hand writing is bad and I've a tendency to grip to hard. All of this leads me to wish I had a keyboard under my fingers to catch the thoughts that fall out of them.

My computer will soon be fixed, and the same goes for my teeth, so these minor things that ail me will be done for, however I'm a little too in the moment to just think of them as temporary.

Some challenges posited by my memoir writing.

my computer is well on it's way to being fixed, and my memoir is on it's way to being written. That's not to say I have near enough material as of yet, but on the plus side, I'm up to about 10,000 words and I haven't yet gotten to the meat. Actually that may be the minus side. I haven't actually figured that out.

The problem with this writing I've been doing is that my life is confusing. Trying to structure it so that people could make sense of my ups downs and various influences is a nigh arduous task. Timeline doesn't properly organise my life, and normal memoir structure doesn't either. I don't want my readers to be as confused as I was once they get to the bit about madness.

That's where the issue is, in portrayal of moods and all of that I can't rely on time, or on history. I seem to be doing that a lot, working on things for which I've no forebarers. It's a hard thing to do.

Of course there are many memoirs to look at, and read and reference, but somehow I feel like my memory of events is unsusual. I explained to someone earlier this week how I remember things so well; I tie everything together. If I'm learning about one topic I tie it to another, and another and so on until everything is a jumble of connections.

I have connections, not timelines. I have to go back and use details to sort out the actual timeline of my life. I think that my dad's first break that I was aware of was after my brother's death, but that's only because I'm assuming a partially causal relationship, not because I have any real feeling about which occured first. I could always figure out which years these things happened in through memory and through asking people, but I don't really think that would clear the air.

I want to explain things in an order that makes more sense. That's why this memoir is going to be an interesting experiment. I don't know if I'll ever end up releasing it, but I do know that there's quite a lot of stuff that interacts. It's not stream of consciousness, but it is structured based on sense rather than time.

Most people understand time, but for me, with my ups and downs, and dilation and contraction, time isn't the best way of ordering things. I don't experience time in the same way, and I don't know quite how to reconcile this experience with others.

So be it.

Wishing I could post more. Damn broken computer.

The stuff i've been writing in notebooks as of late all points to the writing of a memoir. I'm pretty sure I finally have the impetus and will to do it. It may end up being more like a "dreams of my russian summers", memoir only in the loose sense. I'm expecting it to be more about the truth than about the actual events. That's a tricky thing of course. I have a feeling stuff from the blog will come in handy and get slid in there, but I imagine most of it will be new stuff. I intend to continue writing the blog as soon as my computer is repaired (which should be soon). I'm using a school computer right now, and so will keep this post short.

The memoir may take some time away from my posting, and I do intend to put some serious work into it. I'm not entirely sure if I'll ever finish it, or where I'll get with it, but I do hope to find out.

I've had a lot to say as of late, mostly because my new meds have been giving me an unusual freedom from the mercurial nature of my moods. I do hope I can write more of it down here when the computer is fixed. That memoir may take a year, or two, or longer, but if I manage to finish it the people who read this will be the first to know.

So good luck, Will be back when I'm able.

adieu.

a contemplation on memory

My posting has been very very sporadic of late. My computer died and I've yet to get it fixed. Ah the life of a college student. I have been writing every day though. There are a lot of interesting things happening to me, and though the presumption is a bit egotistical, I bet you'd like to hear about them.

I'm on new drugs. Taking Seroquel. We're still working up to a normal dose but I feel better and friends are taking note. The fact that I can actually chose what to work on rather than being at the whim of mood and inspiration is very odd. I've been taking time to get used to not being nervous about the next coming episode. There's just a whole lot of stuff that I'm still getting used to.

I could explain more, but I've been thinking other interesting things that are more interesting to everyone else. I don't feel so hopeless anymore. Though I still don't believe in a god and I still don't really feel like life has any meaning, I haven't been feeling so hopeless. I haven't felt as blown about on the winds of time and space.

All the things I wrote while I felt that way show a lot. I don't know how accurate or inaccurate the things I though were, but it's certainly interesting to see what I was thinking in the past. It's a different sort of revision now. Before this looking back at things I had written was a study in differing writing style and growth as a human being, now it's more like reading things written by an entirely different person who I happen to have the memories of.

All of this has also given me a differing view on the way memory works. Of course I've been taking courses on exactly that topic as well, so I know better how it actually works, but I've also had these philosophical thoughts about it. That sureness, and lack of sureness that memory has is something I'm rather enthralled by. The fact is that we know only our current state. What is now is all that is. I think I can finally finish reading Swan's way, and the other volumes of "À la recherche du temps perdu" (or Remembrance of things past) The insights that it has about memory, and its sheer size are a few things that interest me.

I've had some of those Proustian thoughts myself. The ones about memory being held in time isolated from other events. It's all of interest to me more now than it was before, because being well and remembering not being well is a surreal experience. The things remembered take on a movie like quality.

I remember tics and gestures I used to do, and I remember being curled up in the foetal position on a bed, but I don't always feel like those people are me. That's the leap that we all make, that these things we remember really happened to us. It's an easy leap to make, and logically solid, but it still is a leap. That's where all of this coalesces into one problem.

It's the same damn question we as a species have been asking since the advanced development of our forebrain. Who am I. If my memories don't define me, because they are only me in as much as I admit they are, then what does? If my actions now become but memories later, then are they important either?

That's the thing. I can't really say if the zen living in the moment is really the best way to go or if the western Sartrean existentialist equivalent is a solution. I don't know if there is a positive thing about our existences, and I don't know if now that I'm well enough to continue on in a way that isn't horrible tumultuous I'll have enough good to outweigh the bad.

That's the problem, the answers don't come. In what I study, the brain and its workings, I don't get to find out what meaning there might be. I'm given more things to mull over, but I'm never given a large number of explanations. That's where I hit a wall. These questions that we ask are nigh unanswerable.

I'm awfully tempted to take the Wittgenstein view that we're just asking the wrong questions. That's a significant idea. Asking what it all means may not be a question that makes sense. An object doesn't mean anything. A state of existence doesn't mean anything. We associate our words with semantic quatility, do we also then associate what they refer to with semantic quality? I'd guess that we do. We want to construct meaning out of our memories, and out of the objects in our world, and out of our lives, but the fact is that meaning may not be applicable to these entities. That's where we may fail, this application of a human construction on something beyond us, be it life, or memory, or whatever else.

lack of posting, explained.

Haven't been posting as much lately mostly because my computer died. I do apologise for that. I'm not sure how long it will be until my computer is fixed, but I have been twittering more because my cell phone still works. so if you still want to hear from me I'd suggest going through the backlogs of this blog or going to my twitter at www.twitter.com/patch615

Finally Finding out who I am: Living on an even tack

I'm on an even tack. It's unusual and wonderful. I haven't felt this normal in a long long time. I'm so happy that things are good.

I have a few things to talk about, though I really could (and would be more than happy to) go on all day about how my new drugs are affecting me.

It's been a weekend of papers and music. I played a show today with one of my bands, and this weekend I started another band. It's pretty exciting. I need to get back on recording my solo stuff, but I haven't really had the time.

I've really been enjoying all the creative stuff I've been able to do as of late. It's nice. I was worried that my new drug would hinder my creativity, or just change it in some odd way, but it really has made things better. I can create at will now. Before it required passion, or inspiration, now it just works.

That's something I've never known, being able to do something just by working at it. I always was able to do some things naturally and simply couldn't do the others. It's very odd finding that I'm actually able to change my abilities by exerting effort. It's weird being able to write a paper without having some spark behind the writing.

My friends have noticed the difference too. I was worried about giving up alcohol, and to a certain extent weed, but frankly, I know I'm not going to miss it. Another plus is the fact that one of my drinking buddies from when I was drinking a WHOLE lot, also has quit drinking because of the drugs he's on, so we can not drink together. It'll be interesting.

I'm feeling good. Even the stuff that's a cause for anxiety, debt, schoolwork, being single, isn't nearly as bad as it ever was. It feels good to feel good and not worry about the consequences.

It's nice loving music again. Before music was what got me through. I didn't love it the same way. It was like a relationship you have because if you didn't have that person to lean on you wouldn't be able to support yourself. Now it's one of those things where I'm not playing music because I need to, because I couldn't live without it, I'm playing because I love it. Of course I still feel like I need to play, I still have music coming out of me all the time, and just can't hold it back, but it's not so urgent. I can play music without the need for catharsis.

That cathartic turn that writing and music took for me is something I'm glad to be over. Writing to excise demons is always a study in futility. Those demons remain, and the things you write don't bring anything positive into the world about you. The writing is flat, and bitter, and full of the ugliness that language so brilliantly can display.

Language and writing can be so ugly and harsh when used that way. Music too can take on that edge. Music not made as a remembrance of what it felt like to be in a world that was ending, but which was played because playing it would make the world end.

I haven't known who I am without these vast fluctuations in mood. In the mountains I was stifled and so wasn't able to feel who I might be in less confining circumstances, and once I got here I went mad. I've never fully figured out who the hell I am. I know some things about me that couldn't be suppressed by depression, and couldn't be exaggerated away by mania. Those things stick out, but I'm still in a mode of self discovery.

Some would argue that who you are under pressure, in the worst of the worst, is the essence of your being, if that's the case I better know who I am than most people ever will. However, I think that who I will be in the rest of my life (drugs willing) is really about when I'm well.

It's such a trip finding out what is real, what isn't. It's so odd finding out which things really pique my fancy, and which were just infatuations enhanced by mania. It's great finding out that I really am this driven, exciting person I thought I was in mania, but without the arrogance and over reaching. It's also great finding that I'm not the waste of air, and paper, and space, and resources, my depressions had me so convinced I was.

I'm here, and I am finally me.

This is my first chance to find out what makes up my world, and what I am. I feel reborn, with some of the ties I had before, debts, and friends, and school, and memory, but that is no more than I was given at my birth. I am new. The me that will walk out my door tomorrow is going to be a different me than has walked out that door hundreds of times before.

An excerpt from my notebook.

This is an excerpt from one of my current notebooks

"The world is organised in such a way that people like me (whatever that means) are noted for honour but nor for support. The value of art of course may be changing, but as things have been and may continue to be for a long time coming, I am valued in one way and forsaken in another.

I just make note of this because there is still a heavy stigma regarding mental illness, but the social enthusiasm that mania brings as well as the creativity are rewarded. Like everything else in my world this exhibits a very apparent duality, or polarity of things.

I'm still not sure if I prefer Manic-depression to Bipolar as a term for what I've got. Both make sense, and both are valid. Bipolar just seems like it doesn't fully explain it, unless of course you already think of Major Depressive Disorder as Unipolar depression. Of course only psychologists and crazy folks think of it that way. Which is why I feel Manic-depression is more descriptive to the lay person.

All of it is semantics though. Not to say Semantics aren't important, Just that getting to the semanticity of a single word neglects some serious complexities in the disorder itself."

"It seems like being mentally ill is all I ever write about anymore. What happened to my other interests? I used to write varied things about varied characters but as of late all that comes out is the examinations and laments about my head. I know how much it has affected my view of the world, but it did not remove all my other interests. What happened?"

Preparing for Normality.

My head has felt a little different these last couple of days. I started on a new drug (new to me, not new in the other sense) to sort out my brain. It seems like it's working. I haven't been having the crying spells that had been cropping up this last week.

I just feel normal. That's so unusual for me. I don't feel like there's any serious cognitive impairment, but every once in a while my eyes just sort of loose focus. It's not like the world goes blurry, because everything is clear, my processing just goes out of focus. So I could be looking out at some trees, and the trees will still have defined edges, but the visual image doesn't have any connection to anything else. It's like all I'm getting is the feed, and none of the associations.

That doesn't happen often enough for it to be a serious problem. I do need to start going to bed earlier on this drug, it's pretty sedating. I always used to have trouble falling asleep, so going to bed at 2, let alone as early as midnight, was kind of the only option. There are a few things I need to get used to.

I won't be drinking much alcohol anymore. My dad is on the same stuff, and I know that alcohol affects him a whole lot more now. Drinking the way I used to is just out of the question. Given, I used to drink pretty prodigiously. I like alcohol for alcohol's sake though, so I'll still be able to enjoy a snifter of Irish whiskey, or a bottle of good beer. It will just seem like I had far more beer or whiskey than I did. I suppose I'm fine with that. I'm willing to give up drinking for a modicum of sanity. Shit, even if it just rids me of the depressions I'll happily give up drinking. The problem I keep hitting is figuring out how to deal with social situations. parties are exculsively drinking affairs, and frankly they're rather boring while sober. I really don't like parties, and I really do like alcohol, so there's that. I'll likely just be the DD a bit more often when my friends want to go out drinking for the evening. And I do have a rather good excuse. It'll just be a little hard to explain considering how much I drank before.

Of course all of that is probably a good thing. I will miss it, but I am most certainly NOT going to miss depressions.

I'm really hoping my creativity doesn't suffer, but as if to prove that it won't, I'm working on a concept album. This isn't like some of my other projects, started in mania's and never followed through with. I think it may be good. I'm being a little backwards about it, Lyrics first. I've always gone the other way around. I feel like that might produce interesting results. I'm not sure if I want to do it alone or get some friends involved. I ultimately just want to get it done as soon and well as possible, but I don't really know how that'll work.

I'll likely write the songs and then see if my band likes them. They'd have to like all of them for it to work, but if they did that would be nice, I could use drums and a trombone in the songs I think. It's still a major work in progress, I've only the lyrics for one and a half of the songs. It's exciting though. It's interesting learning to work when neither despondent nor ecstatic.

I spent so much time getting used to, and understanding my mental issues that adjusting to a normal life is hard. It won't be exactly a normal life of course, but that doesn't make it less daunting. I haven't ever really been normal. My youth was spent in a very small town, up in the mountains, in this very specific microcosm of a world. my adulthood thus far has been spent grapling with mental illness. All the while I've never quite felt like there are people like me. I take a sort of Shikatagnai attitude about that, but it still is something to note.

Shikataganai is a Japanese phrase meaning "It can't be Helped" is an admission of futility, but not in a defeatist manner

Normal is going to be weird. Normal is not something I've ever truly experienced, and anything close to that is going to be foreign. I don't really know what to expect. I'm not apprehensive, but I am unsure. It will be interesting to find out how I take to whatever bit of normality I can grasp.

Debt, stress, and a sense of futility.

Sometimes I really hate my life. There are quite a few things that are pissing me off right now. It's usually money that worries me the most. Not because of the credit crunch, though that isn't very helpful. It's all because of things in my past, recklessness being one of those things.

The need for money to do the things I want is rather infuriating. I live simply, I try to be frugal. I live in a small apartment, and try to get my rent in on time. I don't buy things I don't need, and I recently got a job. So why do I still have these goddamned problems. I am simply tired. Tired of paying for things, tired of having to go through hoops just to exist.

my skills aren't of any serious worth. I can chop wood, I can make things, I can scavenge. I can write, and Play music. None of these things pays the damn rent. None.

So I'm stuck with no ability to really survive without the patronage of others. I am talented, but that doesn't get me anywhere. The things I do aren't valued by our societal structure, and I am left in debt.

I don't presume that I am the only one who has these sorts of troubles, but I only know my own troubles, so they are of what I write. That's the problem.

My fucking life. When some things are good, others are bad. Or rather things are always bad, I just don't always know it.

I feel like I burden the people around me. That's mostly because I do. It's hard for the people around me, and I'm tired of doing that. It hurts them and it hurts my pride, and my pride is one of the few things I'm sure I've got. God knows I'd give up my pride if it would give me the things I need, like money, or security, or any number of things.

So that's where I am. I don't have any existential depression, just this new fucking stress about money, and about being able to live on my own. It's an untenable situation.

Like I've already said, I'm just tired. Just too fucking tired. I'm gonna keep on going, and I'm going to try to fix things, but there's only so much I can do. I don't have much control over all of this, and that is disconcerting. I am at the will of things beyond my control. That's not the way I would like to be. I don't want to be blown about on the winds like this. I want to have some control, or to at least believe I do.

I don't want to be the victim of fate. I just want to be. I'm not free to live. That we have to pay to live is a clear problem with this fucking world. You cannot live without money in the western world.

NO matter how smart I am, or how skilled I am, the same constraints apply. The same constraints bind me into these knots I can't untie.

Have I been defeated?

I don't know why I'm doing two posts tonight. There's not anything particular that's driving it's way out of me. I don't have some hidden demon to let free onto the page. All that is unique to this night is a new bottle of pills, a few due dates for the morrow, and a very ambivalent mood.

I feel beaten. I don't think of taking my new meds as a failure. Recognising something is wrong and dealing with it as soon as I have is remarkable. I just feel defeated. It's not specific, nor do I have much real sense of how to combat the feeling.

So much of me just wants to be over with all the extra stuff I have to deal with. Grades, school work, work, money, meds,

If I could just be out in the woods with a garden to tend and other food I could restock periodically, and just write and play music, I'd be happy. Well I say that, butwould I be happy? I don't know. It's an impossible condition, that woodsy condition I talk about. Sometimes I feel like I'm more tired than curious, and I'd rather take a rest in the woods of the US or in an apartment somewhere instead of going on to ask the big questions I want to ask.

Sometimes I wish I could give away my ambitions to people more equipped to use them. Give my ideas and intelligence to someone who wasn't infuriated by the asinine nature of administration, and of money. I wish I could ask my questions, and do my experiements without all these intermediate steps.

Find some mentor and work under them, and then work my way up. No classes that teach me only what I already know, or could find out rather easily. No more money spent in the service of gaining information I already have. Could I just start my experiments now? I have them designed, I have my ideas, and I know what I need to do to make them testable, and to determine their validity. I know what I need to do, why do I need to prove myself for so fucking long.

I am already proven. I'm just so tired. Of the way the world is. Humans construct things, and I don't want to deal with our constructions. So much of what I have to do is separating the stupid human creations from that which was there before.

That's so infuriating.

I'm going to take my pill, and go to bed. If it works my days will start to be level. And then I'll start taking more, and I won't go into those crying spells I've been having. I will alter my chemistry until I am able to move along in a way that the rest of humanity can deal with. I will conform myself to the stupid structures and restrictions of those around me rather than forging my own ground. I am defeated. It wasn't a deceptive feeling. I am changing myself for the world around me. I am changing to better fit into this world of artificiality that I so vehemently eschew.

I am defeated, but nonetheless, tonight I will take my pill and go to sleep. I will say goodnight to the me which is at odds with this world and will wake up muted.

I will be muted. And I will be well enough to control certain things, but I will be muted, and shallow, and like those around me. I will be well, and I will be as the world needs me to be.

God how I hate that idea.

I will take my pill, and I don't know who I'll wake up as. I'm hoping I'll wake up as me, a little less sad, and blown about, a little less likely to cry for no reason, but I don't know.
I don't know if I will wake up defeated, or wake up simply modulated.

an Essay evening.

my left arm still aches just a little bit from the bloodwork I had done today. It's kind of cool looking at the little needle hole in the crook of my elbow. Today has been fast, and slow, and everywhere at once. I wrote a paper for a class. It's mostly done, but I've been feeling so uncreative lately, and I don't think this essay is one of my better ones. I don't know how to make it better though. That's always hard for me, finding that my writing isn't where I want it to be. How hard some things come is worse just because of how easy writing comes normally.

I start taking new beds today. It'll be my first time taking meds for bipolar disorder. I'm looking forward to certain things not happening. No more crushing depressions, no more of the aftermath from wild manias. Of course I'm afraid that some of my creativity will be extinguished, but I don't really believe that it'll be a problem. I just have to learn how to live on a normal even mood. I've never really done routine, or when I've tried it's been completely subverted. That's something new, learning to live on an even level. I look forward to knowing how everyone manages.

I don't look forward to not drinking. I won't miss marijuana, the social bits perhaps, but the rest not so much. But alcohol I love. I love being sane more, so I'll be fine, but I find it ironic that I'm going to stop my serious drinking before I turn twenty one. A good whiskey or a good beer is incomparable. That's not to say I don't try. Of course I can still have a little from time to time, but the separation from the ability to get drunk is pretty marked.

Even with normal moods I'm going to be different. That's something that takes some getting used to. A little bit of medicine doesn't make me normal, it just makes me a bit better. I'm not saying that I'd like to be normal, but I would like to know what it's like. As of now I have no reference point.

This whole thing comes easily. This post has been easy to write, easy to sit down to. When I try to write these graded and marked things the words don't come out as well. It's because I have to constrain my thoughts to some single topic. I can write on some topic, but I can't remove the subjectivity and passion from it. A research paper is fine, because I have all these facts to fall back on, and it's just a thought process. I can also write blog posts and essays and stories filled with whatever it is that defines my papers. There's something I can put into it, but when I have to write some paper making a subjective analysis I just can't do it. I can't pretend to be objective about something so subjective. That's where the problem lies.

there are more things in heaven and earth than are imagined in your philosophy

listing grievances or putting out a log of my existence never feels very satisfying. I don't like to wallow in my own life. I spend enough of my time having to deal with that which surrounds me, no reason to push it into my writing as well. It's sometimes unavoidable though.

I'd rather write about characters who aren't me. I'd rather tell stories about people who have different problems, and different proclivities. Somehow that's not what occurs. The only character I truly know is myself, and even that comes into doubt. So I write about myself again and again trying to dissect the contradictory person I am. It's a troublesome process. All I ever feel is drained.

Self criticism also only goes so far. How long before railing against my ills and insufficiencies makes those things the centre of my being? It's all in a mess of self doubt that I can't quite reconcile with anything else.

Where does all my self awareness get me? If I cannot change that which I feel, and think by being aware of my own insufficiencies, does it matter that I know? Does knowledge ever make up for anything?

God how I wish I knew. I feel like I would rather be fully aware of a tragic fate than uncertain with a possibility of happiness. All this damn waiting and uncertainty makes for such a bother. The things that I was so deeply attracted to in high school seem to have correlates now. What I loved in Shakespear makes more sense for my current state than for my state in adolescence. My fascination with Hamlet, and with Othello, these tragic characters, makes far more sense when looking at who I have become than when looking at who I was.

In Hamlet's famous soliloquy towards the middle of the play he hits on something really poignant, for reference I'll add some of the preceding matter. Mind you this is from memory and I haven't read Hamlet for a number of years, so forgive any inaccuracies:

to be or not to be, that is the question, whether tis nobler in the mind to suffer the slings and arrows of outrageous fortune or to take arms against a see of troubles and by opposing end them. To die, To sleep, perchance to dream but in that sleep of death what dreams may come

That's the thing that always sticks out, that undiscovered country is what holds us back from death, and even from the future. We prefer those evils which we know to those we have no accounting of. Even an improvement which is foreign scares many, simply for its newness.

It is a fundamentally human trait, this fear of the new. We are uncomfortable with change. That's partly why I think I might rather know for sure of some horrible fate than have to wait and see if things will turn out alright.

I know that isn't really the case, I'm fine being left in the dark and waiting for the uncertain, but the central urge to avoid the new, and stay with the routine still bites at my innards.

That's what this is all about, those things that still grab at me despite my better efforts. Days where I cry for no reason, and days where I feel like I could take on the world despite objective evidence to the contrary. These are the things that are so puzzling. Who am I if I have no control?

I notice that most of this post is (are) questions (not sure if that's the correct grammar for the sentence). I can't help but feel that's what most of our existence is. If this is the era of anything it is the era of knowledge. It is knowledge, or whatever we think knowledge is that defines us. That includes the questions we ask, and the things we think we know.

Which knowledge we chose to ignore and which we chose to take up, which things we chose to put forth as knowledge despite their lack of supporting evidence. Hell even a latching on to evidence as a support for our mental conception of the world.

We are now so defined by what we know, or by what people say we know. I'm rather ambivalent about that. Everyone thinks they have a truth. We are back into a modernist world where the virtues are meta-narrative and Truth (capital T).

Everyone has their knowledge and sticks to it, and that leaves me here in my bubble of uncertainty. I am stuck knowing that all of our ideas are based on ephemera. We are in Plato's cave, seeing only the shadows. We do not see objects, we see the light that they reflect. We do not ever touch things, we are only influenced by the fields around them. We do not ever know anything, because the truth of science (and even that isn't immutable) is that it must be able to be proven wrong. We are uncertain, as much so as we always have been.

"there are more things in heaven and earth than are imagined in your philosophy"

How long till I write myself dry?

Sometimes I just leave the text box open on a tab in my browser. I never really know when I might want to post something. I also never know if it's going to be asinine or if it's going to be profound. The desire to write comes whether or not I've anything to say. That's the sort of thing that gets to me though. That maybe I'll just write and write until all of the interesting things people could hear out of me have been written already.

How often can I write without putting every little bit of myself on the page?

That's not even the primary concern though. I'm more worried about boring the hell out of the people who might read my writing than I am of draining myself dry. I'd rather not exanguinate myself for art, but somehow I imagine that'll happen.

I don't even really know why I feel that should be something all the people who read this know. It's a conundrum I'm not entirely comfortable with. I post and post until I have nothing to say, so is my posting something that I do to empty my head or is it something that I do until I can't do it anymore? Is the emptying of my head a side effect or the goal?

Of what worth is a post if it gives no information and makes no artistic contribution to the world?

Probably none.

Probably none.

A beautiful deluge.

Today I witnessed an unusual downpour. it was trickling one minute and suddenly out from the sky came a deluge. The water poured at a prodigious rate, and everything was water and fury.

Walking around in the rain felt a bit like home. It's an unusual thing. I feel most comfortable in climes that imitate Ireland and England. That dreary, rainy thing just suits me better.

Not sure what to make of that. I could come up with explanations regarding my heritage or something like that. I don't feel like doing that. This isn't an observation made as a foil for biological or psychological musing. I just felt like noting how good it feels to have the water flowing down.

It isn't the rain that depresses me, it is the need, (or social construction) to stay inside that depresses me. It is this insularity, and separation from nature that makes me feel uncomfortable. That's true a lot of the time. I don't feel right surrounded by the sounds of machines.

We go camping because we like that feeling. We like that closeness. I don't understand people who go "camping" with a trailer, or with electronics, or with any number of other things. It is this tie to and reliance on technology, and artificiality which seems to cause so much ill. It's not suggested much, but our move from living with nature, to living against it is a possible cause to many of our ills.

People are so afraid of getting wet that they lug around umbrellas, and put on heavy coats. It's as funny as it is sad.

Like so much else, I wish for a change. Some sort of change.

What to do about lack of nature?

One of the themes that comes up consistently in my writing is the idea that the cities we live in, and the artificialities we surround ourselves with, are some how at odds with our nature. It's a very nuanced opinion, so a single sentence couldn't really encapsulate it. That's the problem. The theme comes up, but there are all these complications regarding whys, and regarding how our current state may not always be at odds with us.

That's the thing. I don't have a lot of solutions to offer, only critiques. I don't want to just provide a negative analysis of this aspect of modernity. Offering solutions is part of a good critique, and I just don't have any.

This idea(along with it's twin, madness) has dominated my writing since I moved away from the forests I grew up in. The forests were magnificent. I hated the people. The confining nature of the social structure was all the more evident for the openness of the world around me.

I spent so much effort trying to get out, trying to separate myself from the nearsightedness so clearly displayed, that I missed the full effect of a forest on my psyche.

The freedom of being able to leave my front door and be in a world where I could completely avoid human interaction was amazing. If I were to leave my door today I would find pavement, and the sound of engines. Everywhere are the sounds of machines, whirring on, slowly insinuating that there is some mechanical god keeping us all in check.

I want to fix that. The only solution to this disparity between what we are and what our cites are is what I've been thinking of as plant terrorism. I use the word terrorism because it has emotive force. what I'd like to do doesn't resemble terrorism in any way. I am not planing on spreading fear. It is the spreading of plant life that I'd like to work on.

on all of the concrete structures that line the campus I want to plant climbers which will grow up the walls, covering the cold, too-smooth manmade stone. Find someplace with the right conditions and plant an Ivy. one of the great things about this is the fact that once you have ivy on a wall, taking it off takes pieces of the wall with it. The permanence of what we create isn't really permanence at all. Each thing we make can be destroyed in rather short measure, adding plants reminds us of that.

I understand the problems with upkeep, and damage to property, but I feel like removing some of the anxiety, and damage our overly planned cities cause is well worth a bit of vandalism. We've spent so long trying to subvert nature, it's time to , if only slightly, help it along.

The things that surround us are concrete and glass, and we are slaves to these materials. The wood we see is processed, and stained, and varnished. The trees we see are city approved, and managed by arborists, and experts. In a city, or even a town of any decent size, the wills of nature are secondary to the wills of man.


So maybe we can avert this crisis of mind that living in our manmade shelters seems to be causing. Plant something. Make the world less grey, and perhaps things will get a little better.

Morbid thoughts.

Sometimes you just need someone to talk to. I think that's part of why we get into relationships. I know it's a big thing for me. Some nights are just too long. I know that if I chose to lie down I'd be met with nothing by fear and despondency. That's why I seek out someone who could understand me.

I guess it's shelter from the storm which I seek. I also want someone who I don't get tired of. People are great. And people are horrible. I can't deal with people for too long without getting some time to myself, but sometimes there are people who I can put up with no matter what. There are people who I don't feel like I need to get away from. They come few and far between, but when this occurs, it is magnificent.

I'm tired of waiting for something to happen. There is so much that I want, but can do nothing about. I just don't know what to do about that. The things that bother me the most are the thoughts I have in the middle of the night, while trying to get to sleep. The thoughts that haunt me, about death and about all the shit that could happen. That striking fear that makes one seek out any sign of life they can find.

Today in a class the professor was talking about suicide (psych class) and while he was talking about it I thought of (and pictured) someone just standing up and holding a gun to their left temple (presumably they were left handed) and pulling the trigger. I pictured the blood splatter out to the right of the room, and the scattering of people after the event. I imagined still sitting in my seat, blood and brain on my shirt, not doing anything.

Everyone around me would have been running or crying. Everyone would have been shocked, but I was sitting alone, unphased, waiting for whatever was next.

It was a morbid thought, and I realised it, but there was little I could do about it.

like the lyrics to a beauty pill song "The season makes me cruel, but I have these thoughts in the summertime too."

longing for a forest.

Yesterday in my daily errands I decided to go on a bike ride. I was downtown on my bicycle, and for no reason in particular I rode her down the bike paths into south Davis, and ended up following the bike loop. I Found myself looking for stretches of wilderness.

I'm not a creature of cities. Even a dirt road, kept by the wheels that roll over it, is too human for me. The woods have a particular feel to them. Walking through a meadow out towards a stand of trees is entirely different than any experience in the suburban, or urban environments most of us live in.

Davis would be wonderful if you grew up here. There are places to play, and there are trees and paths and parks. All of that would seem so wide and open. It is only when you've been in the truly wide and open that all of this is sullied.

I am shaped by my experiences, and cannot get around that. the things I hated about growing up in the mountains shape me as much as the things that I loved. The things I detest hold as much sway over me as the things I adore.

Of course some of this thinking has been brought on by an unusual desire to stay in. I want to get away from all of the traditional worries of the world. I want to get away from debt and away from bills, and away from cars, and away from dental problems, and away from administration of anysort. All I can do while here is retreat into my room. That doesn't suffice. Were I in the mountains I could just walk out my door, and I would be someplace different. I would be in the trees, away from the heavy influence of man. I could go off the dirt roads that run through the forest and just walk. The branches would crack beneath my feet, and the sound of the wind in the trees would inspire song in my thoughts.

I wouldn't close myself off with headphones, or with conversation, because the things I could hear wouldn't be engine noises, and electrical hums, and the buzzing of fluorescent lights.

on the State of My Generation

I worry about my generation. I worry about other things too, of course. There are plenty of things to worry about.

I've a few reasons for worrying about where my generation is going. All the generations before us fucked things up pretty magnificently. I'm also worried because we haven't done anything to inspire confidence. There are small inklings of interest, involvement, artistic movements, but no where is a revolutionary spark. There is no Students for a Democratic Society.

we are the new moderates.

We are the children of an academic nihilism, of post-modern ideals in a world which is decidedly at odds with itself. We are still dealing with the modern with tools given us by the past. The modes of interaction we have are the same, the way we act is the same, but the technologies that mediate all this are far different. We are dealing with a modern world in the only way we are able, as humans. We are the same as most of our ancestors, and most of our ancestors wouldn't recognise cars, much less computers.

I don't know what to make of that.

We are blamed of narcissism. That is part function of our raising, with "helicopter moms" suburban wealth, and advertising that while making us feel inadequate, makes us feel special. The cultural touchstones are television shows, and video games. What we remember are media constructions, not defining events.

9/11 is supposed to be the event that defines us, but ultimately it does nothing to create a movement, or a unity, it is an event that fits for all generations, and is really an event of our parents. Like so much of what happens now, it is the result of our parents', and grandparents' stupidity, or lack of foresight, or obstinacy.

Where are we to draw collectivity from?

Where independent movements flourished in earlier generations we have movements co-opted by advertising from the beginning (or near enough). I don't see art from people my age. There aren't galleries with our work, and the walls that before might have been covered in beautiful Graffiti on are for the most part left clean.

The short film on youtube is comedic. Some of it is brilliant, but very little (if any) of it profound. The blogs we write are about us, and not about the larger world around us. The myspace profiles we keep up painstakingly are filled with ephemera, changing from week to week, from fad to fad.

It is all in flux. A musical style is born and dies with one band. An art style lives for a week, and then fades away. Who writes the books, I don't think my generation does.


Where we have so much ability to produce, we have so little production. The fact that we are always talking gets in the way of the fact that we never have anything to say.

I don't think I can asses our place as a generation. We are a generation of mundane creation. Where before the aura of art was created by some establishment, we now are held back by commercialisation.

We don't paint a moustache on the Mona Lisa because she is everywhere, and everywhere the same.
There aren't any remixes of Starry Starry Night, because it is sacred through reproduction. A poster of that painting hangs in nearly every college dorm room in the United States. That painting is ubiquitous, and as such is unchangeable. Because one form of it is everywhere, it cannot be messed with. cannot be remixed. In an era of mass production the establishment is they who decide what is printed.
The smart young artists decide to become designers, making ad campaigns for the powerful, instead of making art which subverts the status quo. There is no refuge from advertising. There is no refuge from mass production, and there is no refuge from technology.

We know that ads effect buying behaviour. It's not something that can be avoided. If people are exposed to ads, a predictable percentage of them will go out and buy product. This is a dynamic that has a lot of influence on my generation's actions. We are defined by comodifiable trends. While the Hippies had some time before their style and attitudes were adopted by capitalism, (or rather were sold back to them) our modern Hipsters are a product of the sold to begin with.

The roots of rolled up pant legs, thrift store clothing, and fixed gear bicycles were all from communities separate from the subculture of hipsters. It was only once these things were sold with such fervency that they became hipster staples.

Fashion is largely the co-opting of practical modifications for aesthetic reasons. I roll up my pant legs so they don't get caught in the sprocket when I ride my bike, but eventually if what I do becomes some sort of ideal, people will roll their pant legs up without having biked anywhere.

If I look like I shopped in a thrift store, it is because I did, and I did so because i don't have the money to buy new clothes. If a hipster does, it's because the styles that are sold to them in department stores, or in urban outfitters, or wherever they shop, are intentionally reminiscent of the clothes I pick out at the thrift store.

If a band sounds lo-fi, and rough, it is likely because they cannot afford the sort of equipment that makes them sound clean, and even. Sure there's a stylistic component, but what hipsters don't realise is that there is a very clear monetary component.

The people who make the trends are not the people who have money to follow fashion. People who spend money to look like b-boys are not b-boys. That is an essential problem in our era. The things that mark some community are co-opted. People who look like me may not be like me.

If I look like a hipster because of lack of money, that does not make me a hipster. When I was a punk, seeing someone with a Mohawk meant I had found kin. It now doesn't mean anything of the sort. Someone riding a certain type of bicycle, or any seemingly self made bicycle used to mean I had found people also interested in bicycles, no longer is that true.

We are not what we appear to be. Appearances no longer count for much. I can't help but wish they did.

You can't have a revolution without a community. the counter culture communities are all appropriated by ads, and by commercialisation. The primary organisations are determined by our elders, or at least by their politics. We are the new moderates. Perhaps a little more progressive than the age before us, but we are prematurely old. The attitudes (and excesses) of adulthood are now ours.
I don't think we'll be the generation to have revolutionary ideals and then sell out for a house in the suburbs and a lease on stability, because we've already been sold.

We don't own ourselves anymore. Credit card companies, and Loan companies, and our parents, and our jobs, and our schools, and our stores; they are our owners. How can we sell out when we don't have possession of even ourselves.

So how are we going to break free of the bond of our forbearer's mistakes, and the bond of advertisers?
How do we keep the meaningful from being transformed into the superficial?

Late nights, Guitar, and Idiosyncracies.

There are a lot of nights where playing guitar and writing keep me up far past when I should be down to bed. It's a common phenomenon for me. I don't even consider tiredness in all that. It's separate from the bipolar though. When I'm Manic I go out on walks at three in the morning on a week night because I just have to go out and walk, because I just need to be moving. It's far different when I stretch my night longer and longer because I've been writing and playing.

When I was a little kid I used to play with my legos so intently that when I finally realised I had to pee (which was when I was near wetting myself) I had to run to the bathroom. It was a really sudden thing. I got so into the world of my legos, and so into what I was doing that nothing else was important. Eating, Sleeping, Peeing. these things only happen when they absolutely had too.

I think that is one of the things I can really separate from my madness. I may be obsessive and energetic by chemistry, but I feel like even when I'm my most normal, least chemically imbalanced, this singularity of focus is pretty common. flight of thoughts is pretty common too. That's where all this trouble comes in. The things that are more pronounced in mania are also parts of me when I'm not manic.

So I'm going to describe something interesting that I hadn't heard from anywhere else before I came up with it. It'd be nice to see if other guitarists feel this sometimes. I get what I call a "guitar high" If I play guitar for long enough, I sometimes (more often than not really) get this high that is very similar to being high on marijuana. It's bizarre, and notable by outside observers.

I also get Guitar withdrawals. I just want to play so badly. My hands even make instinctive guitar playing motions. I make stringed instruments wherever i can, and play anything remotely guitar like. more than a few days I just couldn't take. I try to take a guitar everywhere. The few times I haven't, I sorely regretted it. This is also something other people could tell you. I am just not comfortable without a guitar around.

Also noted, having a guitar to put all my energy into is magnificent. This conduit through which to spout whatever musical thoughts I'm having is a great thing. I love the feeling of strings on my fingers, and the callouses are marks of pride. If my fingers hurt a bit through the day, my day goes better.

That visceral connection between the strings and my soft fleshy finger tips (no longer so soft or fleshy) is so essential. The ability to say something that language cannot express is magnificent. I've mentioned what I mean by that in earlier posts.

Ambivalence

About half of my favourite posts start out without any purpose. I just start writing, and what comes out is essentially the rough draft/brain-storm that I make when writing papers.

I don't know why I like that so much, letting my convoluted thoughts be an end product.

That convolutedness has always been a problem for me. The severity of the problem varies greatly, but sometimes it's simply too much. Too many thoughts swirl about in my head, and the torrent created is capable of washing me out to sea.

That's why my interest in this convoluted, jumpy, writing style as an end product surprises me. For all the harm that the quick, heavy, and unstoppable flow of thoughts causes, I still am mesmerised by it.

That's true of so much. Ambivalence is a more prominent emotion for me than hate or love. There is so often this measure of both. So I love and hate the way my mind works. The way the cogs mesh, the way the thoughts spread, I love and hate that. I cannot seem to decide if it's a good thing or a bad thing, because maybe it's both.

An unusual awareness.

sometimes when I sit down to write I get this unusual awareness of the way my hands work. The feeling of which parts hurt, and which muscles I flex to perform certain actions.

There are a number of little things like that. Things that show up when you don't expect them to and remind one of the things that generally remain hidden.

Last night at a party I was finishing a cigar, by myself on the patio, and I just stopped. Everything just stopped. I looked at the long grass and the detritus that lay on some parts of it, and was overtaken by the odd beauty it had. Even the burnt couch off to my right struck me as magnificent.

The point of all this is I don't care for most of the rest of the world, and it's only these blips of magnificence which keep everything else together. everything would disintegrate were it not for these moments of lucidity.

I don't have them nearly often enough. I really wish they were the default rather than the exception. That the world should go on with primarily horrible goings on , and these little graces are the only respites, all that seems cruel to me.

On Improvisation.

on the balance between written and improvised songs. Improv provides certain difficulties and getting shows, allowing for audience participation and consistency. I love a primarily improvisational mode though. The way things show up when the usual conventions are subverted fascinates me.

I don't want to just play songs that are essentially the same everytime they're performed. A tune, or some general motif is pleasing, and going from that is wonderful, but more preconditions leave me feeling trapped. I can learn and rehearse and perfect songs with consistency, but all the creativity is in the making of it.

The fires of creation don't spill out my fingers when I'm playing that which is known. It is only when forging new ground that my spirit soars. In improvisational music I have found that "mystical connection to the starry dynamo in the holy machinery of night"

The madness that moves further towards destroying me is channeled into this anarchic vehicle and made inert. only for a moment do my passions cease to cause me harm. All the pain and sorrow that spreads in me comes out, leaving nothing but music, and hands aching at the pure effort of expression.

so philosophically I want improv. I set out to write logically, questing for some intimation of what my musical purpose is. Instead I have found and inner desire to set free my wildest of wills and see what happens.

In a way I set myself up for unhinging. Complete removal from the banal, the normal, and even the sane. I strive for anarchy, for freedom, and for improvisation.

Job's Delima

I'm one cynical bastard. Last week some time someone was remarking on how my friend always seems angry. In fact he's usually quite happy. He jokes and uses sarcasm a great deal, and it never struck me as particularly antagonistic, but apparently he seems an angry fellow nonetheless. He's usually quite happy. That's his default, it's just not what people perceive of him.

Where as I am for the most part angry. In actuality I tend to be bitter, hopeless, and cynical about the world around me. People always take me as happy. I am personable and kind, and people for the most part remember me as a good guy. I am perceived as a very happy guy. The fact of the matter is that's not the case.

I'm not bothered by people's misconceptions on that front mind you, it's just something interesting to note. under whatever façade I present I am not very pleased with the way things are. Of course there are moments of happiness, and of course I love certain things about the world. I haven't hardened into a shell lacking in enjoyment, I just feel that there is far more suffering than joy to be had.

I don't know what that means, I just know that happiness is marred by the stain of previous sorrow, and sorrow is made the worse for the same.

I know others have it worse, and that is another point at which my view turns downward. Others have it worse! If my suffering, and the shit that I rather dislike dealing with is in the realm of lesser evils, then the greater evils are monumental. Truly, if there are enough who are worse off than I, and few enough who are better off, where does this conception of life as good come from?

I know most of the reasons we try to slant things to the positive. That doesn't help me. I'm not asking why people think there is good, I know why that is, I'm asking where the good actually is.

That music helps me assuage the pain isn't proof enough of some greater meaning, or some generally good, or even indifferent, existence. Music and words are my saving grace's and they only help me cope. They don't make for an equal ledger. I still don't think there is anything that will.

So that's my problem. I am pleasant, I try to make the world better by my influence. I am aware of my actions, and aware of how I deal with others. I am trying to be a good person, whatever that means, and I'm trying to find out what that means as well.

Every bit of my ability I put towards making myself whole enough to make the world better, and I've nothing to show for it as of yet.

no Karma, no God, no reward. I struggle on because I have to, and because my music and words allow me to, not because I have gotten anything for being a good person. Why do I try, because I can't do anything else.

So what is the point of my effort if I am given nothing but madness debt and depression in return?

There is no point to my effort. Realising that activates a feedback loop.

the sadness gets greater and then I find I can do nothing, then the sadness gets even greater, and so again it goes around.

If I see you on the street I will be kind, perhaps moreso than the other people you meet. If I know you, I will seem happy, also moreso than most of the people you see. However, somewhere behind all this is some seriously pent up anger, and depression, which is rendered inert only when the fires of Mania, or the influence of drugs takes hold.

It is not my fault, in fact I have done all in my power to fix it, all in my power to help not just myself, but everyone else as well.

And Somehow that this should be my wages just doesn't seem right.

Verses which stick to me.

So the song "Zurich Is Stained" by Pavement has been stuck in my head pretty firmly for a little while now. I have no idea why. Of course the song is catchy, and I do love the way the music sounds, but usually the songs that get stuck in my head don't have lyrics that stand out from the music.

just the first couple of lines like to keep repeating in my head. And I haven't gotten tired of it. It just feels like a statement of purpose.

You can look up the lyrics if you'd like but the lines that just stare out at me are these

"I can't sing is strong enough, cause that kind of strength I just don't have."

"You think it's easy but you're wrong, I am not one half of the problem,
Zurich is stained and it's not my fault, Just hold me back or let me run"

They just sort of get stuck in my head.

I don't really know why. but they sure feel right.


Of course this happens to me sometimes. some verse will seem particularly potent and I will be struck by it. It will infest my head, and I won't be able to get it out for a while. The relationship I have with other people's words is pretty intimate.

another verse that's been sticking to me lately is the first line of Howl by Alan Ginsberg. The whole damn poem sticks to me, but it's hard to remember more than a few verses without some concerted effort.

"I saw the best minds of my Generation destroyed by madness
Starving, Hysterical, Naked
Dragging themselves through the Negro streets at dawn, looking for an angry fix"

I know a bit more than that, but the first line just hits me.

It's something to note, the way that we interact with the words around us. Why does one verse have more meaning for me than another. I know why the beginning of Howl sticks out to me, it's that whole madness thing.

I'd like to know which verses people love. I feel like if I knew that I might know more about them than if I just tried to figure it out with questions. Even knowing if they have a favourite verse would be telling.

Of course I'm still puzzled by some of the verses that have fascinated me. I don't know what drove me to memorise the final soliloquy to a midsummer night's dream.

"if we shadows have offended
think but this and all is mended
that you have but slumber'd here
while these visions did appear
and this weak and idle theme,
no more yielding, but a dream"

there's more but I don't need to put it down.
I just don't know why I was so into it. I don't know why certain things stick out to me
When I read books sometimes I end up underlining lines that just rush off the page. That happens all to frequently.

I would like to know why. What in me makes these things stick out, and how much does this interaction between myself and the words of others define me?

it's a question I have to leave un answered, but I do wish I knew.

On the inauguration

I don't feel like this inauguration marks a serious change in the way the US works. I'm skeptical mostly because the same forces which supported every candidate for the last quite a long time supported Obama.

His rhetoric is brilliant. A more positive rhetoric that I've not heard from people in serious power. The Si Se Puede co-opting = brilliant. However I'm afraid the only revolutions have been rhetorical ones.

So I think we will get out of our current crisis' and we will do so by putting ourselves back into the system which led us here. For all the democratising forces we've come to rely on, they still operate in spite of the larger powers that be, rather than in concert with them.

I really do think of larger organisations as things with lives of their own. If you took the whole staff out of a company and replaced it with entirely different people, you would have the same company in a very short about of time. The power of a few individuals cannot change the basic nature of an organisation.

I don't know if it's because I enjoyed Dune a Little too much, or if maybe it is just my bent towards futility, but I do know that an analysis of groups as entities separate from the parts which make them up makes good sense.

It's something that has bothered me for quite a long time. The presidency is still going to be what it is going to be. Unless there is some structural change business as usual is going to continue. Perhaps particular policies will stop, but the systemic problems that brought untenable policies about will still be intact.

I don't believe there will be change from this. And I don't believe that any elected official, as long as they are elected by the money donated to them rather than by the people voting, will be a vehicle for real change.

The only real changes we can make are by ourselves.

So I don't know about you, but I will not worry about who is president or who the police are, or what the laws are. I will worry instead about the way I interact with people, the way that I affect the world around me and the ways I can make my surroundings better. there is little more I can do.

As for this president, I look forward to being disappointed in new ways, and the election of a minority while we're still prosecuting other minorities doesn't particularly inspire me.

The woods.

it would be easy for me to write either an account of my day or a litany of complaints for some stretch of my life. Those are the two things I'd most like to avoid. The easy has never worked well for me. Not to say the hard has worked particularly well either. I suppose I just have a thing for a challenge.

As much as I dislike where I'm from, the mountains are beautiful. I could disappear into the woods so easily. It's not like disappearing into a crowd. It's not like being alone in a city.

I know I'm wrong, but I feel like I mightn't have gone crazy in the woods. I would have gone crazy with those people, but not in some woods, somewhere, without the small town bullshit.

My point is that when I'm in the woods I feel alright. Things don't bother me quite so much, and when they do I can go out and my stupid decisions hurt no one but me.

My thoughts about it are more that our lack of adaptation to the cities, and large groupings of people is what puts me ill at ease. The woods, the ancestral condition is so calming for me because all of my evolutionary adaptations are for that situation. I even wrote a novella about the idea of city living driving someone insane. The fact is that I don't feel like our ordered singular existences fit with the current fact of what we are as a species. We haven't had enough time in this world to fit it.

It's one of those things I wonder about.

Incidences and prevalences of mental illnesses in rural areas would be nice to see. Of course the lack of reportage and increase in stigma in small towns would make things difficult.

The point is, that walking through the woods today (I went on a hike) I didn't feel as unbalanced as I had been the rest of this week.

Oh my god. What a fucking night.

On the bike ride home I wrote five blog posts in my head, and forgot all of them. I think I'm going into a hypomania, along with my thoughts came these admonishments to stay home instead of going out in a reckless fashion. Tonight I felt like everyone loved me.

I went to two parties, this after a day of playing a lot of music. somewhere between 4 and five hours of it. My fingers ached with the feeling of strings digging into pads. at the first party while we played beer pong outside my left hand had odd joint cramps that I haven't felt since playing with my highschool screamo band in a garage in below zero winter.

It was a pre-arthritic shocking pain that causes my fingers to ache when I even think of it. I thought on the bike ride back that my fingers were tumescent, and corpulent with ache.

That party was good and bad. I felt out of place, and was out of place, yet when people left all of them knew me. When people left I had some tie to them, and now people I basically hate as a mater of principle think of me as something admirable in some way shape or form. of course I felt like everyone liked me, that's the think. As much as being all hypomanic makes everyone like me, it makes me think everyone likes me more.

my friends and I stayed longer than we had expected too and didn't get to the next party on our list until around 230. It was a hippy danceparty in the best way possible. I don't know what it is, but I LOVE to dance. I could dance for ages, and for all that I automatically have a "if it doesn't get me laid why do it" stance much of the time when it comes to these things, I love the way my body moves. It's only when I don't care that things go well for me, and if they don't I don't care.

That's the best situation. I danced from 230 300 to about 400. It was magnificent. I changed the party. the party kept going because I created trends that were not there before. I got people playing themselves as drums, and at one point had three other guys singing an awkward four part harmony that modulated in all the wrong places. When the music stopped I started singing a song and had a circle of people singing a long.

That irrepressible charisma is why I love hypo mania. I have been amazing and crazy this week.(end?)

I have been right. and it has been magnificent. any tendencies of mine that are attractive come out, and the force with which my personality shines blots out most of the blemishes.

I no longer seethe.

The world is right, and though it is four thirty, I doubt I can sleep. I will try, but I feel another straight through night coming. I feel another fourtyeight hour run. I both love and hate that. there are brilliances and deficiencies that arise from that. I don't know what I can do to change it though.

I can control how I interact with people by choosing who to interact with, but I can't control how I interact with the world, with my room, with myself.

disciplined?

Some habits you just have to stick with. Like waking up early. It's so much harder to do if you don't keep it up on weekends. That's how a certain form of organised writing is for me. It's never difficult to write, and I do so every day, it's only hard to get it put down in some sort of order. I'm great at writing things in a flurry of inspiration, but sitting down to write in some concerted way is a task requiring discipline.

It's a good discipline to have, and one that separates all of those people who are "working on a book" from people who write for a living.
That's the trick. There is something about a person who's willing to go full in to some task that is useful in just about every field. It is the musician who plays music all the time who is the best, and the footballer who plays football all the time who's best. So besides this natural or engendered skill that one has predisposition towards there is also the skill of discipline.

It's an interesting way to think of the interrelation between various factors going into someone's success.

I only write about this because I sometimes doubt my discipline. There is so much nebulousness and tumult in my world that ordering it into some simulacrum of normal is ridiculously difficult. I'm getting better at it, but I'm only getting better at it in this relatively sane state, which is far from normal for me. I haven't felt this normal in years, and that is something very odd to say when I've only been here twenty years.

I've thought many times that I've lived more in this short stretch than most people have, and that thought hasn't seemed too ostentatious even as my life settles into more normal channels.

essentially now that my life is settling down, and now that I'm finally dealing with the problems that have defined my last two years I have to figure out some of who I am again. The things I do because I enjoy them, or simply because I must don't have an explanation in my mind. I no longer know which of my traits is mine, and this is the time that I'm figuring that out. I don't know if I'm essentially an undisciplined person because all of my past evidence has been thrown into doubt. That's true of many of my qualities, and though the exploration is daunting, it's also exciting. I can find out who I am, and maybe I can also change who I am. That's a proposition few people are presented with, and I get to be in this unique place.

Music and Mysticism.

This is mostly verbatim from my notebook. I like what I was thinking today, and I'm going to put it down see if it still makes sense, and perhaps expand.


"When my head's alright my world isn't. I've made the observation before, but never in quite so succinct a form. I know reasons and effects. I know most of the whys and the how's but still the phenomenon baffles me.

those times when something makes logical sense, but still eats at ones centre, are when one turns to philosophical thought. That by itself is an interesting observation. Wittgenstein thought that logic and language failed once one got to metaphysics. Those most important of questions were either false, or encompassed by the bounds of language.

I'm so tied into my English speaking world. Language is one of the places I feel comfortable. Music, Language, and the mind. it is disheartening to think that any of my three primary refuges are unable to fulfil my needs.

I often make up for the failings of my mind, and now the failings of language, with the realm of music. this may be a back door.

Of course you could consider music as language the way Wittgenstein thought of language, a relflection of the underlying laws of the world, and so only able to express things encompassed therein.

I'm not sure that's right though.

It is said "when words fail, music speaks" There are things that "a love supreme" (by John Coltrane) says which cannot be wholly expressed in words, or any language.

When we are infants we can hear and discern all of the sounds a human could make. Sounds only in Hindi can be discriminated only by people exposed to them in their infancy. We lose this capacity as we grow in our native tongue (or tongues) this ability to hear all, this connection to some sort of oneness of humanity, it is where we have yet to be sullied by the firm rules of our mother tongues. Getting back to this state is where music comes in.

Music is where we overcome that adherence to the rules of language. Strict semanticity is not necessary in music.

A B flat doesn't mean anything, it's just a B flat. We can make music that doesn't follow the rules and it will still be music.

Theory describes music but does not determine it.


So from all of this it is natural to ask the question 'what are the limits of music'

any sound can be music. If it can be heard it can be musical. The revving of a car engine has a pitch and a tone, and can be thought of as just another instrument. The sound of the wind through the trees, or the sound of the woods in "silence" (because true silence exists only in a vacuum) sound is everywhere.

SO what effect does the removing of traditional semanticity and representation do to the experssive abilities of music?

Wittgenstein describes these things most people have experienced but which do not fit into the actual use of language. Being absolutely safe is his most potent example.
To quote from "A Lecture on Ethics"


"Now the same applies to the other experience which I have mentioned, the experience of absolute safety. We all know what it means in ordinary life to be safe. I am safe in my room, when I cannot be run over by and omnibus. I am safe if I have had whooping cough and cannot therefore get it again. To be safe essentially means that it is physically impossible that certain things should happen to me and therefore it's nonsense to say that I am safe whatever happens. Again this is a misuse of the word"


However many people can attest to the feeling of absolute safety. The feeling exists, and so there is a possibility that the state exists as well.

Music can portray that in an accurate way which is not simile. The ability of music to show without using metaphor or simile is something I don't think can be found in other communicative systems.

I'm not certain of this, but if there is any representative of the metaphysical which can be invoked without sullying the purity of the metaphysical it is music.

No other realm can so wholly describe an experience. People associate songs with different things, and asses their quality or personal interest differently, but songs which tap into some fundamental truth are always able to be seen as such.

Whether or not one liked John Coltrane's free period, one was forced to see the visceral nature of them. The Openness, minor chaos, and unboundedness impress themselves upon one regardless of ones opinion of the pieces. Different interpretation does not dismiss the truth of the musical statement. The song is what it is regardless of the observers' position."


SO there was the thought. Clearly the words don't fully describe the idea. That's part of the point. My words cannot fully describe anything but the world on which their structure is based. Music is the only form of expression with which I can say what I mean, while not using simile. Or at least it is the closest way to get there that I've yet found.

The Disclosure problem.

I've a lot to talk about, but first I'd like to touch on the nature of disclosure on the internet. I have clearly identifying details on my blog, and it's commonplace for one to be translucent about details on facebook. When I point someone to my blog, I'm showing some serious inner thoughts, but the fact is that anyone can see them.

I have a feeling it's part of this thing writers have been doing for ages, putting their minds out on their sleeves for all to see. I don't know how true this is, but with we bipolar folk it seems to be even more common. I only have anecdotal evidence for this. My favourite example though, is the fact that Lord Byron seems to have published everything he wrote.

That lack of editing eye, or at least general dismissal of the possibility that some things should stay hidden well describes the blogger. However much I harp on about how much information about myself I'm giving away, I'm still likely to publish all of it. My life is available to everyone.

I'm not sure why I take this view. I've mostly noticed that secrets don't tend to fit well with having a generally worry free life. That's of course not true for everything, the stigma about mental illness for instance. Sometimes it's useful to not have people knowing little details about yourself, be it your mental state, your sexual orientation, or your religious beliefs (or lack thereof)

But that's the point. What do we get from putting all of this out into the world. What have we ever gotten for putting our thoughts on our sleeves, and getting rid of the useful convention of minor secrecy.

That's not to say I can't pass as sane, or arrow-straight when I walk down the street, it's just to say if anyone cared to find out they could.

So there are details I won't put here. I'll talk about things that are deeply important to me, but in a way that is more akin to some writer's essay (far less composed mind you). I won't talk about certain details that might hurt my causes. I won't mention when I'm infatuated with someone, or where I went for dinner. Those things are unnecessary and have the potential to make other parts of my life difficult.

It's a blurry line that we straddle when putting our lives on the internet, but it's easier to figure out the longer you've been doing it. I guess that's true of most things.

It's always when I'm well.

It always seems that the times I have to deal with the most bullshit are the times I'm the most mentally stable.

If I have financial troubles, I only ever have to deal with them when I'm primarily well. If I have administrative shit I have to deal with it's always separate from any of my mental health issues. It sometimes makes me wish for mania. It leads to depressions and makes me wish I had the free expansive feelings of madness.

I'm not sure which comes first, the depression or the troubles that seem to occur when I'm mentally allright. I know they somehow go hand in hand. It's hard to not see the world as uncaring and vengeful when you're in some sort of dire straights or another.

I know it's chemical, the cycle between depression and and mania and everywhere inbetween, but I can't help but feel that the swings are tied into heightened understanding of the situation one is in. If you realise it doesn't matter, and you really can do just about anything, then mania is the natural response. This fiery passion which drives you to produce and to fuck and to drink. It is the response to a world where the fates look down on you favourably, and the machinations of ill will have no affect on you.

And Depression is the natural response to a world in which existence may mean nothing, and the fates snarl at you with contempt.

I like that imagery, the fates. It sounds so much better than biology, or chemistry. It sounds so much better than saying that an intellectual depression goes along with a chemical one so well because of the sad determinism of neurochemistry.

The image of the three hags, looking down on us and seeing the weave of time, it makes one feel that even though nothing higher cares, at least something is watching.

Being seen in ones' pain is more bearable when it can be seen by some other entity, someone who isn't susceptible to the cruel march of time.

Along with this nicer, more hyperbolic expression comes another point. The epic proportions that invoking the fates suggests, feel applicable. Like Byron before me, I feel that the crude temperament that I've inherited lends itself to the epic, the legendary.

The expanse of experience that I have felt, and am likely to feel to a greater extent in the future (episodes get more severe with time in nigh all cases) is not sufficiently explained by a prosaic tale. It is only the epic form, that deals with so many gods and the fates of men which seems to best explain the life of one who has felt these deliciously, sometimes terrifyingly, powerful manias, and these soul-sucking, dark, depressions.

The great questions move from philosophy to Psychology

I may already have posted today. Or it may have been last night. I don't actually know. I don't remember time in a continuum for the most part. Very often my memory is just filled with snatches of events unconnected to the rest of my memory. I'm not sure how normal that is, and I don't particularly care.

The reason memory comes up, other than my lack of knowledge about when I last posted, is that the way my memory works influences my understanding of the world. It's a question asked in much great literature, what, if not memory, makes up us?

My favourite example isn't currently accepted as literature, but I expect it will simply because of the artistry of it. The television show Skins is where I'm getting this example from. The show is brilliantly written, and brilliantly acted, and all around great. At the end of series 1, one of the main characters, Tony, is hit by a bus.

This causes severe head trauma, as is to be expected. He ends up with the full regimen of neurological problems that come from having your skull run in with a bus. Various memory things and deficiencies in knowing how to perform tasks, even sexual dysfunction.

Throughout series 2 the show deals with his coming back into his own, and remembering things he'd forgotten, getting back skills he had lost. Series two covers other things as well, but this is a main story line for it. For a large part Tony changes as a person, becomes less manipulative, suggesting his earlier machinations were more a matter of choice than of personal make up. What is telling is what stays and what is stripped away. What about him remains him once he can no longer be sure about his memories?

I know psychology, and neuroscience are starting to answer these sorts of questions, moving them out of the realm of literature and into the realm of knowledge. It's something I'm rather proud of. I feel like maybe it's the reason I'm becoming a psychologist and not a "thinker". I'm not likely to be writing books on existentialism any time soon, because I will be questioning and finding out things about existence through science. In any other era, Any other time, I would be asking my questions only of myself, and getting very little in the way of results.

It's a great era. People of course worry that knowing (or getting towards knowing) the root of all of this will remove the grandeur, but I don't see where they're coming from. I don't have to think of a soul to be amazed by the complexity of a brain. The vastness of the universe and our solitaryness in it is something to be marvelled as much as the power of the gods.

I don't see a problem with the onus of knowledge of the depths of humanity being moved to neuroscience from philosophy. I welcome it.

I welcome what shall come in the way we see ourselves. I hope that the advances we make now aren't passing. I hope that what we come to know is not fleeting. If it is, so be it, however, we've so much potential, I just wish we'd reach it.

I've lost patience

I'm not sure how many hours it was, but I yesterday I simply slept. I didn't do much else. I sat down and played guitar, and then I layed down playing guitar, and then I fell asleep in that state. I put everything away when I woke up an hour or so afterwards and got myself actually ready for bed. I've just woken up, and I think it's at least 12 hours after I first drifted off.

Of course the evening before was a busy one, but I can't say sleeping more feels like a good sign. I've said it before, but even when things are good I worry, waiting for the other shoe to drop.

So that's where I am. I feel alright, but tired. there are more things I have to deal with than I'd like, and I really just want to be done with so many of the things required to live in the modern world. If I had only to go out in my fields and work every day, I could do it, and I doubt I'd complain, but that I have to pay bills, and have to fill forms, and have to organise things into arbitrary categories puts me on an unusual edge.

I'm sure most people with temperaments similar to mine have had this sort of thought. To just drop everything and get the fuck out. Maybe just go and live out in the woods, with nothing to worry about because the only person you deal with is yourself.

in your mania there's nothing you can do but throw yourself into your work or thrash out against the trees. There is no risk of creating debt or of driving oneself into further and further problems. When depressed one would do the exact same things one did before. It wouldn't matter that you didn't feel like leaving the bed. If you needed food you would be forced to get up and find some. The things you do would not be of serious consequence, and you would have no illusions about them being so.

We live in a world where we are told taht each of us has an effect on things. We each are responsible for making the world a better or worse place, and each of us has a choice in this matter. Everything we do is supposed to be in service to that. I have no such delusions. If perhaps what I write or what music I play gets a following I'll make a mark, but I don't presume everyone will. there are many forgotten people and realising that makes doing all of the extra things, the bills and forms, all the more pointless.

I suppose I just don't want to put up with all of these things that don't enrich my life, or make a mark on the world I'll leave behind. I have lost patience with the worlds pointless machinations. with bureaucracy and it's agents, With popularity, and fashion, with trends and the internet. I have lost patience with the world. When all I do has no real, or at least no long term, consequence, I see no reason in doing it.

I'll likely still deal with all of the forms and bills and bullshit that comes along with them, but while before I held this view I now will hold it with more fervour. I will put real effort into things which matter. The things I care about are going to be the things I feel I can actually make any sort of difference with, and if time ever conspires to give me only the space in which to do the pointless, I will slough off some of that responsibility until my world is free enough that I can do what I want.

I just want to be a person untethered by the world's invisible constraints.