A strange world I Live in. I’m thinking about writing some Rules of Human Behaviour. Engagement with the enemy type SOPs Laid out and intelligent, it could cover most every encounter and solve problems, mend wounds, walk on water.
It’s so strange Living like this. I used to have friends, a Circle, a home – places and people of defense, like having a castle with walls and a generator that I could plug myself into to heal and to recover and recharge.
Now I have forums and music and a car. I have the friends but I can never be sure what they are or what they’re thinking. You can’t trust humans without a close proximity, you can’t need them from a distance, because if you need them you can’t BE at a distance. Chicken and egg type paradox, I suppose. People seem unable to decide if I’m an adventurer or a slacker – if I travel to meet new people because people mean so much to me, or if I travel to mee new people because people mean so little. I don’t know myself, most days.
SO, what sort of thing would go in a human ROE? Nothing big and obvious like “thou shalt not kill”. I want this to be a book of morals, since that’s what we bend, and that’s what we lose sight of in the presence of prizes and princes and riches and things.
A proscription against killing – that makes sense from the selfish overview of species survival – the moral aspects of the commandment are covered in all sorts of not stealing and not coveting and do unto others type clauses. The actual act of killing isn’t perhaps amoral simply because there are so many possible exceptions. Eugenics and euthenasia and a well thought out suicide – mercy killings and wars and the elimination of detrimental things that can’t be bettered. All those things that I avoid thinking about out loud in any sort of company, because it’s the sort of thinking that gets me branded as a fascist…
Realistic and cynical. I’m writing my thoughts here because I don’t know where else to put them. I have friends to whisper to and to call and to inconvenience, uneven relationships with Lovers that must remain unmarked and secret. Frightening encounters with figures in my head view to replace a father now dead. This has been a hard year, and I’ve tried to deal with it, grasping at straws and at people – looking for recourse and externalization. I sing my thoughts and dreams and fears on stage, talk meanderingly about things that other people can’t or won’t take seriously. I have online forums like this Journal where I must remain politically-correct to a certain extent. I must not offend venue owners and fellow musicians, must maintain equilibrium in an uncaring, unforgiving, egotistical and paranoid environment. In a world where people google their girlfriends, boyfriends and themselves to see what people are thinking and what’s been thought so they can take a little weight off their own thinking, one has to be extremely careful about what one says.
I have private online forums, but do I filter my thoughts? Are the few people allowed behind those filters to take my reflections in that format as a personal message from rob?
I’ve placed myself in a vulnerable position where I see too much and have the right to say little. Where I’ve earned a place of no confidence and I’m too mobile to be stable. I want things but I can’t have them because I’m not there. I’m not anywhere. I’m just vanishing over every fucking horizon I’ve ever driven over, and no-one knows enough to know I’ll be back.
Ahem. I feel bad that I don’t know EVERYONE in the picture, but I’ve got a good grasp on the major players.
I’ve meandered, I’ve rambled. Rule number one in that ROE would be something along the lines of “don’t start what you can’t finish”. And beyond that, taking responsibility for what you allow as much as what you enact “don’t let something start that you can’t finish”. I don’t know that it would fall as number one for most of our race, but it would definately have a special place in the Vagabond Edition. Meant as a guide to the whims and wanderings of the well-mannered wanderer, this friendly reminder to avoid getting into the situations of the sendentary would go a long, long way towards thwarting budding difficulties.
Maybe it should apply to my Journal entries too – and in some future, beautifully edited leather-bound edition every one of these entries will flow lyrically, and they will have a point, and I will get to that point before my Life-style drags me around to perform desparately again – but for the moment you get the shredded fragmented ramblings of someone who’s heart is heavy and who’s brain hurts from trying to see too many other points of view. Those of you who know me should be rubbing your hands together and thinking “oh, there’ll be a new song soon… and it should be a good one”.
My usual philosophy of how it’s better to be hurting than to be nothing is questionable,
because sometimes the sensation really ISN’T everything.
Fragmentation indeed.
The shows in California, PA were really, really good.
We played a couple of open mics to advertise for the show. Even did some karaoke, though the strategic significance of the latter was really quite dubious. Whatever points we gained from Heather performing Fiona Apple’s “Criminal” in her low-down gritty cold-voice were probably revoked the instant I got up and did “Enter Sandman” by Metallica. My poor nervous self couldn’t decide between my own voice and a James-ian grrowl, and once I heard myself through the speakers, the whole horrible hybrid couldn’t stop shaking. I would like to claim I was under the influence of several shots of “red death”, the rum thing that Greg bought me and the Sex on the Beach that Holly bought me – but really, I was feeling a good deal of pain when I hit the stage, and wasn’t weaving one bit. I think it was mostly the cajoling of the lady-creatures, and the noises I made through the microphone that I held steadily further and further away from my mouth did nothing on the seduction front, though they might have attracted any local horny elk.
Sigh.
The open mic at Jozart was a whole lot of fun – always getting to see what they’ve built since we were last there. In this case, a new bank of lights and the hookah bar. The hookahs are a steady part of Jozart existance now, presumably renting a space there and setting their product up in the centre of circles of students who sometimes enjoy pretending to be stoned after smoking their various scents. The owners of that particular business are really friendly, very laid back. I got a tour of the gastronomic interior of one of those metal beasties. They make me think of trumpets with charcoal brickettes inside.
The audience is fleshing out, the performers are getting better. All in all, a really nice night there.
Thursday night it was off to the Underground (the University’s open mic) and the sudden realization that all of the friends that we knew up here were going to be going to see Harry Potter as opposed to our show. That was the beginning of a horrific decline. Discouraged and sick, Heather went back to Jozart while Holly took me over to a bar that for some reason I can’t ever remember the name of… something like “the Jake Hole”… J. Coles?
Hrm.
I rocked them. Simple as that really. I rocked them. I had my dream of hippie and non-hippie chicks up front and dancing, and a memory I will treasure unto my grave involves the new found knowledge that I can maintain LooseN’s guitar line under fierce distraction right until someone curvaceous actually grinds me into an instrument stand.
Friday night of course was the actual gig. I was so happy to see Sharif and Rowan – we prowled and frolicked and might even have pranced. Certainly there was some pizza involved. I was glad that they Loved the place as much as we did, especially when the turn-out was as poor as it was, it helped that we all just Loved the venue (and the people that DID show up) as much as we did.
Common Thread did their usual blowing-of-rob’s-mind act. Aaron really is just the coolest percussionist I’ve ever seen and Matt’s voice is a very, very cool creature. We then did OUR usual blowing-of-everyone-else’s-mind set. It’s good to see the reaction of people who already thought Heather and I were one of the coolest things on the planet wrapping their minds around the full band. We recorded the night. I’m curious to see how that turned out.
A great night that continued great until about 7.30 in the morning where my mood disolved into grey dawn-light and the water colour runs of confusion. I’ve been trying to sleep a lot since then.
Last night Heather and I went out to MICA and played there to a great response. The first time we played there I was so nervous. Maybe I felt too old to be back in that environment, I’m not really sure… but this time there was confidence coursing through me, and it showed. Justin did great playing the bass lines, he did really well injecting a little something different into Deep in the AM, though we have to work on his bass playing strut. I’ve got to admit, we had him sort of trapped in the back, and maybe he really couldn’t get out of anything but the Trapped Sway Dance, but … we’ll have to work on the strut.
Last night, after the open mic, I lay back and watched Attack of the Clones (because I LOVE IT!!!) and related far too well to Anakin. Not just because slaughtering dozens sometimes DOES feel like the right thing to do…
That brings us to today. I continue with strange dreams. A lot of murder dreams – painting with blood or something. They’re hard to remember on waking but I know I’ve been running amok on some subconscious level. I’ve been dropping into REM very quickly here and there. Someone woke me up Friday night into startled awareness that I wasn’t stepping over corpses – splinters and rolling finger-tips underfoot. A startling shift of reality into the couches and comforts of Jozart and a cold, cold night.
