November 25th, 2007.

I’m watching Alice’s Restaurant. Trying to. After a while I’m beginning to think it’s reminding me too much of a couple of thing. Watching Woody Guthrie’s dissolution – the collapse of their idealism. Cancer and Huntington Disease and how we fall apart and how our music keeps us together but how sometimes what makes us make that music rips us back down again. We’re creatures of sweet sweeps and heights and such depths – and we have these chemicals to keep us even keep if we want them – whether or not we want them, sometimes.

And maybe this is telling the story of a time I wish I’d Lived through. I used to look at it as a time of, if not idealism, then at least optimism and maybe some sort of innocence – but maybe that’s just a side effect of people in their teens and their twenties. Maybe we just always lose that and when we’re a little bit older we simply always think in terms of how the world is a dead-end and the optimism of the past is dead. I look at our culture now and it glorifies sex and drugs and hip hop and most of the kids can’t read and we can’t think outside ourselves and we’re too apathetic to do more than maybe sign some online petitions and write an email or two and bitch and bitch and bitch… but of course I guess 40 years ago that culture glorified sex and drugs and rock and roll and most of the kids probably couldn’t read and couldn’t think outside themselves and were too apathetic to do more than maybe wave some signs around and get high during finals weeks and bitch and bitch and bitch. All their prophets died of overdoses and all of ours are drowned by our mediocrity. And in 2040 I’m sure the kids will be selfish and idealistic and the 30-somethings will be cynical and broken too. I just can’t imagine the movie that will make my generation look like we did something other than take away the possibility that that movie will be anything other than “slightly below average”, overpriced and with no proceeds proceeding to the artists involved.

We’re only human – i guess. But as long as we act that way I’m not sure what can become of us.

It’s been a rough couple of days. Maybe a rough couple of weeks. Maybe a rough couple of months. Mostly I’m just tired. Happy Thankgsiving, people. I know it doesn’t sound like it right now, but I’m happy to be alive and I’m thankful for all the beauty around me. I’m thankful for autumn and my friends and my fingers and I’m thankful for Heather and my brother and my family, be they blood or adopted. I’m thankful that it’s cold outside, but it’s warm inside and I’m thankful for ever ounce of energy that strains through my body and out into the world. I am an emmitter and I Love what I do.