Aria
Per the request of my only reader, I am addressing the uninterested world and using this space for its intended purpose. I am going to talk about my life at the moment. I shy away from doing so because I figure the world is like me and I really don’t give a ripe fuck about people and their lives and their blogs. But I was asked and so I obey, because I always will. That is the power you have over me. I will do as you request because I am a construct of my own flesh and your blood. Sabes? Good.
On to the meat:
WHAT’S GOING ON WITH ME?
Not much, just telling lies like the last one, but these days I reserve the fibs for the boss man who can go to hell anyway. The truth: what’s going on with me? A lot, actually. I just got off the phone with the school’s registration office. I got my degree check recently and noticed a small blemish that makes me suddenly worry that I will not get the BA in December, which makes me worry that I will not be able to seamlessly advance into grad school. And I’m not going to mention the grad school issue, pero tu sabes, and the rest of you non-existent bastards will have to just not worry about it like I’m pretending not to. Needless to say, things are brewing but that is the problem. Things are always brewing and rarely do I get a taste of anything that approximates success or closure. One must define these for their individual lives, but I seem to be gifted at creating goals and making sure they get incrementally achieved, never really tasting the fabled conclusion, which is probably bullshit anyway. Subconsciously I am sure a lot of us throw stones in the future that will always advance with us, skipping along and beckoning and promising. In the meantime, there’s ennui and stomach pains and feeling like a selfish, spoiled brat. This country has, what, about half the world’s resources? That being the case, how can I complain? I have a job, clothes, I miss a meal every once and again, but I am certainly not underfeed, I sleep in an apartment, I find ways of getting the bills paid (albeit late sometimes), so all things considered, what the fuck do I have to bitch about? Oh right, that. Well, why discuss that because tu sabes y yo se and fuck everyone else and anyway, it makes sense on a level that is beyond my abilities to communicate. I can write all the poems in the world and it’ll just be a pile of pressed pulp spoiled by computer ink. It’s not the real. So we won’t bother to get into it, instead focusing on the modern world. Oh, the modern world, which everyone seems to be discussing at length and I really have too much to speak of on these things I know little about. So much hot air I can’t wait to expel, but what can I do? I suppose being engaged is enough, but I am such a fraud, like so many other people—all I do is bitch and that’s about the extent of my efforts. Ann Coulter’s a cunt, yes we know; the President lied, yes, well, which one hasn’t? Oh the crises, oh the poor people and that little girl whose parents turned her into a freak show before she mysteriously was killed, yes her, they found someone who may have killed her, and the country can collectively sigh and relax after so long, safe in the knowledge that their fat lives will now be improved. One less murderer than there was all those years ago and a lot more people getting killed. But you see, there are these opinions and it is important to have them; to believe in them with every ounce of yourself and to wear them like new fashions from Milan, these (self) righteous, furious, important opinions without which you are un-engaged and apathetic and without which you are shirking some duty. And with which you are doing very little, which is fine because at least you care and that is, I am told, the most important thing because, so long as you care, they can’t turn you into Winston Smith, unless they have the hungry rats, in which case you’re fucked.
Is this the update you were hoping for?
Moving on to less serious matters, I have grown old. I still drive around the city listening to the “rock” music at loud volumes, but my heart is less in it these days. We went to Evil Clown and I anxiously cued up the new John Zorn disc featuring Patton and Dunn, two members of the greatest dead band I know of, Mr. Bungle, and half of the always fun Fantomas. Zorn’s Moonchild has everything I should love: Dunn’s bass playing is very thick and prog-rock flavored and it meshes well enough with Joey Baron’s drums Ruins style, and Patton screams and breathes heavily and gets as creepy as ever, but I was not compelled to get to the end of any one track and sped through the whole CD. It just seems like yesterday. What is the future of music? I don’t know, but I always figured it would be associated with the names Patton, Dunn, Zorn, Eye, Yoshimi, but you know, it gets tiring sometimes. As I scan my “cutting edge” or “avant garde” CDs I begin to hum “You’ve Really Got a Hold on Me” by Mr. Robinson and the Miracles or “Try a Little Tenderness” by Otis. Or pieces of Death and the Maiden or The Magic Flute or one of those Brandenburg Concertos. In short, I grow tired of “new” music. I grow old. I think the future of music may be the past.
What? What am I reading? Oh, thanks for asking. Just finished Kafka on the Shore, which I put off for over a year, and what the hell was I thinking? What a wonderful book. I know people seemed to dislike it or call it a minor version of Wind-up Bird or whatever popular dismissal the “kids” want to launch, but fuck them. The book was great, one of the best things the guy has done. It gave me chills. I ask that a book do many things, and that is one of them, so good job Kafka on the Shore. Prior to that, The Woman’s Decameron, which was quite good, even if spots did lag. It was interesting at least and often quite sad. It made me sad anyway. What else? Crime and Punishment, as you know, and right now, rereading some Winterson because it is quick and I have only a few precious weeks before school begins again. Also some poems. The usual lot: Neruda and McGuckian in the past weeks and coming soon, Paz again. Maybe it’ll bring me some paz, but that remains to be seen. Ha ha, get that? Funny, no? Oh, I read Ariel Dorfman’s chilling poetry collection, Last Walt in Santiago and man did it boil the blood. Fucking Pinochet… damn dictator bastard backed by Nixon and Kissinger and the whole bunch to torture and detain his own people. And the coup was on 9/11/73, also a Tuesday like ours. Something about that date, which is the day after my three-year anniversary at the firm, which means a review (maybe) and a raise (hopefully) and the next question: what’s next?
Not sure. I have the chorus of that god awful Clash song in my head and I don’t have an answer, even if the world had an answer for Joe Strummer and co., which was: go. If this is the future of this once great band, please quietly leave. And they more or less did. But I’m off track again.
What’s next? Instead of a chorus by The Clash I wish I had a Greek Chorus to advise me, but the heroes of those plays can’t hear them anyway. Or they choose to ignore them, which sounds like most people. Anyway, it all depends on the dominoes and which falls first. Everything is the result of an action that preceded it and it is just a matter of waiting to see what happens first/next. But you all ready know this because I told you so and because we ate a good lunch together, which is news just as worthy of being put up on a silly blog as anything else. Soup and a half sandwich and some dessert and I still have the Italian pretzels and all those CDs to get through. Such lovely music awaits, and none of it distorted or ironic, thank god.
This is the kind of thing Matt Fraction would have called “gay” years ago when I would send off long emails to my friends. This is long before he was the internet superstar that he is, so maybe by mentioning his name on this blog I’ll get hits galore. All the stragglers who end up here will then be inclined to leave before they get this far. And they’ll go back to downloading Star Trek themed porn and getting their updates on the new Mighty Mouse comics. And we’ll still be here because where else do we have to go? All the world across a flickering screen and I’m so bored with it. Let’s move on, let’s finally do something, go somewhere else in the figurative sense, and then we’ll say we’ve done it, we’ve made the terrible go away and can laugh at how tiny the biggest of our fears really is. And then we can find a figurative place and less wayward way to move in. And never end a sentence with preposition.
Suddenly I am sleepy. There’s news. And my stomach, which has been fucked all weekend, feels better, good enough to handle such a large meal, but the downside of eating so much after a weekend as a hunger artist is that you feel every second so heavy and watch the sun go down like dying buffalo. I think I’ll chance a cup of tea and try and wake up long enough to get through the day so I can sleep again. What does this constant desire for sleep tell us? I figure you might know, Nakata. Tell me about it tonight in the room in the library where I see you staring at the painting. Where’d you get those chords?
On to the meat:
WHAT’S GOING ON WITH ME?
Not much, just telling lies like the last one, but these days I reserve the fibs for the boss man who can go to hell anyway. The truth: what’s going on with me? A lot, actually. I just got off the phone with the school’s registration office. I got my degree check recently and noticed a small blemish that makes me suddenly worry that I will not get the BA in December, which makes me worry that I will not be able to seamlessly advance into grad school. And I’m not going to mention the grad school issue, pero tu sabes, and the rest of you non-existent bastards will have to just not worry about it like I’m pretending not to. Needless to say, things are brewing but that is the problem. Things are always brewing and rarely do I get a taste of anything that approximates success or closure. One must define these for their individual lives, but I seem to be gifted at creating goals and making sure they get incrementally achieved, never really tasting the fabled conclusion, which is probably bullshit anyway. Subconsciously I am sure a lot of us throw stones in the future that will always advance with us, skipping along and beckoning and promising. In the meantime, there’s ennui and stomach pains and feeling like a selfish, spoiled brat. This country has, what, about half the world’s resources? That being the case, how can I complain? I have a job, clothes, I miss a meal every once and again, but I am certainly not underfeed, I sleep in an apartment, I find ways of getting the bills paid (albeit late sometimes), so all things considered, what the fuck do I have to bitch about? Oh right, that. Well, why discuss that because tu sabes y yo se and fuck everyone else and anyway, it makes sense on a level that is beyond my abilities to communicate. I can write all the poems in the world and it’ll just be a pile of pressed pulp spoiled by computer ink. It’s not the real. So we won’t bother to get into it, instead focusing on the modern world. Oh, the modern world, which everyone seems to be discussing at length and I really have too much to speak of on these things I know little about. So much hot air I can’t wait to expel, but what can I do? I suppose being engaged is enough, but I am such a fraud, like so many other people—all I do is bitch and that’s about the extent of my efforts. Ann Coulter’s a cunt, yes we know; the President lied, yes, well, which one hasn’t? Oh the crises, oh the poor people and that little girl whose parents turned her into a freak show before she mysteriously was killed, yes her, they found someone who may have killed her, and the country can collectively sigh and relax after so long, safe in the knowledge that their fat lives will now be improved. One less murderer than there was all those years ago and a lot more people getting killed. But you see, there are these opinions and it is important to have them; to believe in them with every ounce of yourself and to wear them like new fashions from Milan, these (self) righteous, furious, important opinions without which you are un-engaged and apathetic and without which you are shirking some duty. And with which you are doing very little, which is fine because at least you care and that is, I am told, the most important thing because, so long as you care, they can’t turn you into Winston Smith, unless they have the hungry rats, in which case you’re fucked.
Is this the update you were hoping for?
Moving on to less serious matters, I have grown old. I still drive around the city listening to the “rock” music at loud volumes, but my heart is less in it these days. We went to Evil Clown and I anxiously cued up the new John Zorn disc featuring Patton and Dunn, two members of the greatest dead band I know of, Mr. Bungle, and half of the always fun Fantomas. Zorn’s Moonchild has everything I should love: Dunn’s bass playing is very thick and prog-rock flavored and it meshes well enough with Joey Baron’s drums Ruins style, and Patton screams and breathes heavily and gets as creepy as ever, but I was not compelled to get to the end of any one track and sped through the whole CD. It just seems like yesterday. What is the future of music? I don’t know, but I always figured it would be associated with the names Patton, Dunn, Zorn, Eye, Yoshimi, but you know, it gets tiring sometimes. As I scan my “cutting edge” or “avant garde” CDs I begin to hum “You’ve Really Got a Hold on Me” by Mr. Robinson and the Miracles or “Try a Little Tenderness” by Otis. Or pieces of Death and the Maiden or The Magic Flute or one of those Brandenburg Concertos. In short, I grow tired of “new” music. I grow old. I think the future of music may be the past.
What? What am I reading? Oh, thanks for asking. Just finished Kafka on the Shore, which I put off for over a year, and what the hell was I thinking? What a wonderful book. I know people seemed to dislike it or call it a minor version of Wind-up Bird or whatever popular dismissal the “kids” want to launch, but fuck them. The book was great, one of the best things the guy has done. It gave me chills. I ask that a book do many things, and that is one of them, so good job Kafka on the Shore. Prior to that, The Woman’s Decameron, which was quite good, even if spots did lag. It was interesting at least and often quite sad. It made me sad anyway. What else? Crime and Punishment, as you know, and right now, rereading some Winterson because it is quick and I have only a few precious weeks before school begins again. Also some poems. The usual lot: Neruda and McGuckian in the past weeks and coming soon, Paz again. Maybe it’ll bring me some paz, but that remains to be seen. Ha ha, get that? Funny, no? Oh, I read Ariel Dorfman’s chilling poetry collection, Last Walt in Santiago and man did it boil the blood. Fucking Pinochet… damn dictator bastard backed by Nixon and Kissinger and the whole bunch to torture and detain his own people. And the coup was on 9/11/73, also a Tuesday like ours. Something about that date, which is the day after my three-year anniversary at the firm, which means a review (maybe) and a raise (hopefully) and the next question: what’s next?
Not sure. I have the chorus of that god awful Clash song in my head and I don’t have an answer, even if the world had an answer for Joe Strummer and co., which was: go. If this is the future of this once great band, please quietly leave. And they more or less did. But I’m off track again.
What’s next? Instead of a chorus by The Clash I wish I had a Greek Chorus to advise me, but the heroes of those plays can’t hear them anyway. Or they choose to ignore them, which sounds like most people. Anyway, it all depends on the dominoes and which falls first. Everything is the result of an action that preceded it and it is just a matter of waiting to see what happens first/next. But you all ready know this because I told you so and because we ate a good lunch together, which is news just as worthy of being put up on a silly blog as anything else. Soup and a half sandwich and some dessert and I still have the Italian pretzels and all those CDs to get through. Such lovely music awaits, and none of it distorted or ironic, thank god.
This is the kind of thing Matt Fraction would have called “gay” years ago when I would send off long emails to my friends. This is long before he was the internet superstar that he is, so maybe by mentioning his name on this blog I’ll get hits galore. All the stragglers who end up here will then be inclined to leave before they get this far. And they’ll go back to downloading Star Trek themed porn and getting their updates on the new Mighty Mouse comics. And we’ll still be here because where else do we have to go? All the world across a flickering screen and I’m so bored with it. Let’s move on, let’s finally do something, go somewhere else in the figurative sense, and then we’ll say we’ve done it, we’ve made the terrible go away and can laugh at how tiny the biggest of our fears really is. And then we can find a figurative place and less wayward way to move in. And never end a sentence with preposition.
Suddenly I am sleepy. There’s news. And my stomach, which has been fucked all weekend, feels better, good enough to handle such a large meal, but the downside of eating so much after a weekend as a hunger artist is that you feel every second so heavy and watch the sun go down like dying buffalo. I think I’ll chance a cup of tea and try and wake up long enough to get through the day so I can sleep again. What does this constant desire for sleep tell us? I figure you might know, Nakata. Tell me about it tonight in the room in the library where I see you staring at the painting. Where’d you get those chords?
posted by ZombieDante at 12:27 PM
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