I AM FREE

the only freedom is in struggle.
i think.
but i don't know.
...something like, if nothing exists, then everything is possible?
but i think education is good. if you educate yourself too.
and grapefruits are among my favorite fruits. i eat them with a knife.
my greatest weaknesses involve over-analyzing things, getting caught up in spirals of doubt and... being impatient.
but i am also strong. this i know.

"what matters most is
how well you
walk through the
fire."

they're everywhere.

don't forget the names of colors.
words are important.
must do more here.

'each to his own tastes, said the maid as she kissed the cow'

sometimes people have to adapt to you.
sometimes your brain isn't the van gogh someone's looking for.

a few things i've forgotten about:
-to think big. certain events bring me down and i act like i'm sprawled out on the floor. get up you piece of shit.
-sacrifice. you're not gonna get anywhere without shedding skin and getting cut up. (and this is where i get frustrated being stagnant. and what causes me stress and paranoia. because now i'm not moving...because i haven't been in such positions of sacrifice. not enough. and i don't know what it means to really put myself out so my aorta's in danger of being severed. and yea, this is a lot of talk...just words...)


and that brings me to my current conception of time. until now my understanding of time has been largely constructed by the education system. now that i am free of it (despite my desire to return (perhaps out of some reaching out for comfort)) and now that i've stretched beyond the time where i would be back in school i feel restless and strange.. I keep thinking that there's something i should be doing, somewhere i should be. Or for the future - somewhere i will be. But the slate is clean. things are clay. i'm a sculptor. but i haven't started my work.
so i sit here at home on the couch after being served dinner. and i think about tomorrow and the day after...and the next 5 months. and the next year. and it's all nothing. but i need to take the advice of the warning sign generator.

...start my sculpting career.

privileged child

The president of Uganda in the 1970s was Idi Amin. ruthless he was. a dictatorial regime he ran.

Like a child he played games and laughed when things were good. when victory was in the air he felt strong and confident. His behavior infected everyone. even a corpse of a human could get sucked up in his jovial demeanor. And then things would get bad and he would turn into a storm, destroying things around him without deliberation. he couldn't trust anyone and so he'd lie or kill or grab at reserves of power which he didn't really have, but used as defenses anyways.
See he could get into your soul because he made you like him, because he made you like yourself. But this was only temporary. For some anyways. Soon you realize that this demon is sucking you dry because he's a child in a world of rules and he doesn't have a parent. a parent like Love or whatever it might be. this is his power and his freedom. it is also his downfall. the courage to have convictions and more importantly, the courage to attack one's convictions. the strength to hesitate, the strength to jump. the strength for discipline and control. of oneself.

Amin was overthrown in 1979 and people paraded the streets in joy. he died in Saudi Arabia fairly recently. He killed about 300,000 Ugandans while in power. he didn't want to be a puppet of the British. He became a puppet of his own impulses.


I'm currently sitting at my home in westlake with mono. i don't know how long i've actually had it, but i have a great deal of time on my hands. luckily i do not have a job. absolutely no obligations. it's strange. the privileged child lying in bed while his mommy brings him hot soup and vitamins. With all this time i'd love to be doing interesting things, reading many books, writing a lot. instead i have only small bursts of energy which i use up quickly either to walk up the stairs after getting a cup of tea or to satisfy my animal side. i don't know how long i will be like this. and i have a great deal of time to analyze boring things like my future. where i will go after san diego, what brazil is saying to me, what notes are playing, who will be around.

i will attempt to write things down. i have many thoughts. getting them out is a problem. perhaps i will start talking more although my tonsils are like two golf balls. something will have to happen. i don't know how long this lasts.

wizard style

this was written a few weeks ago:

with people
you can't trust many things,
so you must have rocks to fall back on.
boulders which don't budge.
so when you question comfort, as if it's some foreign woodpecker digging into your skin, you know there is a point
where
you
know (something).

like flirting with that line where things are a wee bit insane
and you can't tell whether the strangeness is beyond you or within your grasp.
so you lay around or move about, doubting these people around you, and yourself...and sooner or later you can or do decide that whatever you are doing, whatever they think, you are a rock and they can't really push you around and make you feel like a lizard in the winter. some change, some don't. but they can, you later think. and you know you can roll down if they hit you right. or if you get yourself from the right angle.
but this is the thing - you know the things you do. that you adapt when you want, but there are some things you can't wiggle out of. so either the worms around you adapt and stay around or they don't. either way you don't budge.
but you can.
there's that semi-boring but important saying - "if you have a problem and there's something you can do about it, why worry?...if you have a problem and there's nothing you can do about it, why worry?"...
when it gets down to it, at least for the personal arena, what the fuck is there to do?...

jelly roll morton

when he sings it rolls something like a boulder
and even a raindrop slipping down the window in your car when you're riding shotgun and the sky is bubbling with gloom and your head is sideways against the glass, your eyes tilted up and to the right watching the drops wiggle and wash away like tiny worms on speed with reckless determination to get somewhere and keep going.

the piano bounces and pushes, lays back and dances. a lounge, a jumble, a chord, a blues tune.

i think this music is some of the best.
kerouac discovered later in his writing career that he could continue to discover new forms because his heart grew.
jelly plays like jelly and laughs while he sings.
james murphy does this.
mr yorke smiles when he sings bodysnatchers.
the saddest songs are like jelly donuts.
even
some kind of filling.
i don't even really know if i believe this but you can hear the smile on his face when he sings levee man blues, even while the pain creaks from his voice.

you could be in a charlie chaplin video dancing in circles around your boss while he screams at you to get back to work. but you can't do it cus the music's nice and good music doesn't allow you to walk away. good music is honey. it's sticky.

but i guess other music is designed to blow a hole in your brain. like squarepusher.
i still sticks i think.

a song in the works, about freedom and other things.
how none of us be free, all walking around hitting walls, mice in the maze, cheese chasers, dream wasters...living good lives without boundaries in the dream world.
the president brushing his teeth, the president getting a cavity or taking a shit.
freedom, the ruse.

the chase of mystery and miracle. getting sucked up by time in the mad rush and spit out into a puddle of waste.
not sure where to go anymore in this.
machine gun plays and there's a war.

on the walls in berlin it says often "hendrix is god"

response to ray's email

no notes on zarathustra. I sat in class like a mouse and sniffed around. but i can write on him from what i remember. this will be something else, later.

Basically this is how I feel: figure out the books you want to have with you; the books that pull at you now or one’s you see winking at you from a distance. Bring them with you. Bring some clothes and food and the essentials.

You are planning for a few years from now? You need to just go. I know there are issues with career and whatever but nothing will matter when you’re in the woods. i'm not sure plans are a good way to go

Thinking about recording – I would definitely be attached to the idea of recording things (with synths and everything else) – but I think it’s more important to attach yourself to the notion of solitude. Are you embracing solitude when you’re recording things onto an electronic device (things you can use to communicate with people in the future?) time. hmm. Fuck time. Your recordings are going to be used in the future? To communicate with yourself?...in the future? Then you aren’t alone. I don’t even understand solitude. it can't be possible. You need to figure out a new way to remember. Recording is a weird sort of group activity. even if it's just you.
On the other hand there are many aspects of it which seem extremely beneficial and powerful. And probably it would be best to record. But under the banner of solitude I would be more hesitant. I just think it would be better for the world. But I don’t know.
You’re making the calls. Just don’t actually make any calls.

Solitude, I think, is a sort of cleansing, a shedding of skin, a forgetting; but it’s also a taking a bath in remembrance. You can strip yourself of erroneous shit and bask in glorious memories of childhood, where you laughed and cried and screamed and played without inhibition. You get back to those things and you strip yourself of some accumulated layers of dead skin but not all of it. and you should forget a lot of things you learned because your mind begins to fill up with wood and leaves and water and bugs. and probably you get deep inside your head also with the words of others. You can’t escape it all and you’re not alone unless you take only food and things to help you survive. But I don’t know what type of loneliness is desirable. I would just want a guitar. But not really. I’d want a lot of stuff so I could create a lot – recording equipment, etc.

I have to penetrate this more in the next few days. Reading foucault in the park in 20 minutes, been ‘alone’ all day. But with museums and buildings and artists (and thinking about my fascination with cities and their construction (urban planning as a possible course)) and my books and this laptop which I write on from the lobby of a chic hotel called Buddha. When I get deeper I will write more on this.
The most important thing is to be alone.
The most important thing is to be with one other person naked.
The most important thing is a boundary.
And what happens, where you go, when it’s destroyed.

WaSH

Every dog trudging through a puddle in the cold.
every whimper.
every soul.
every finger.
every crunchy auburn leaf in autumn.

...the abyss into which we look, sometimes, if we really try. Or maybe when we're really afraid and we don't want anything but a smoke and a light film to wash ourselves away.

and sometimes we really wash away. and five years ago we thought we would just shut our eyes for a moment while the scary parts stomped by. And sometimes we even think we were awake for the whole thing, cus we want so badly to believe that we can handle this battle and that love and this burden and that lie. Thinking you have courage, strength so you can deal with your small and big fears. And diving in. everybody has their duel for this day and the rest of them.

there are babies in adult suits crying about respect and trust.

and maybe there you/we are-
splashing in puddles of illusion to feel alive and good about the mess of the mind, the darkness of the devil dipping into your depths for ink to draw the pictures you don't want to see.

wash yourself away.
etch-a-sketch the wretchedness.
don't lie about the fact that you live a life.
end up on an island, a farm, a city roof.

i feel happy in this moment.
but if i stayed here i wouldn't make it.