Bring Home the Bakin'

Scans of racist children's book selections coming soon.

Up now, two new songs.

Click the link for Music For Modern Aquatic Living.

Men of Letters

I placed a piece of tracing paper over the acrylic porthole and traced a shape the light had made in highlight. It resembled the profile of a goat's head, or so I thought. I underlined some extra passages in one of Sylvia's journals and slipped the tracing paper inside before handing it off to my Good Friend and Comrade Benjamin. He wrote me an email which contained thusly:

"Michel,

I found an object of much curiosity within the journal of our late friend Sylvia. It is a drawing on rice paper which first appeared to be little more than an abstract shape. After I read the words highlighted on the page next to it, "the crucified Virgin of Tokyo" I realised the shape was the profile of a goat's head. I did not know why. On Page 317 (not numbered) I found a sketch by Sylvia's hand of a goat's head at the base of the aforementioned Virgin. It appears that we have played a game together here."


The phrase in Sylvia's book was chosen at random, I had thought, perhaps subconsciously...

-------------------------------------------------------------------------

Sylvia's favourite singer, Elliott Smith, has a double-LP out today of unreleased material from his indie days. He was stabbed through the heart in 2003. In those indie releases, the lyrics in his liner notes were done by hand. He commonly would record two vocal takes, nearly identical, giving his songs an eery, subliminal quality.

------------------------------------------------------------------------

I've complied a mix of music I have created down here, along with favourites I have listened to of Sylvia's, mainly defunct indie bands. I will post the lyrics and all songs in some form. My "Oedipus Rex" will kick off the mix... the rest is secret, for now.

Vacation

I had to get out. The oppression of metal walls and stale air gets to you after awhile, and without direct human contact, the pressures (no pun intended) start to mount to intolerable levels. So, what to do besides get out, walk around, exercise my atrophied limbs and experience the woods, the air, the spring. It's been nearly two weeks since my last confession, and things have changed a bit. My family is moving away... my dad is getting a job at a green energy plant overseas... I didn't even listen to the details. Instead I hung out with the people that matter and read and ate real food.

This is my first terranean post so far, though I plan to return soon. Although I don't know how long any person can last down there without wondering if the world is gone, I think I can last a few days at a time and take it as a positive.

The summer is coming, the times are changing, and there is much to be revealed.

The Vacuums, et al

It's been over a month now. Cliches and puns aside, this is the deepest I've ever felt engrossed in something before... I read online that an asian kid went into a college and shot up more people than anyone ever did before. I feel so far removed from it. I remember being 11 and seeing photos from Columbine on the news and being horrified. Now, six years later, in this abyss, I can only read the stories and the pictures and wonder how it has any relevance at all. People will forget it, just like they did so many other things - that Titanic won like 11 oscars, that the Red Sox won the World Series, that Bush stole the 2000 election... "everyone forgets what went before them."

I finally listened to a mix that I found in one of Sylvia's books. It's unmarked except for a white-out and sharpie sketch of stormclouds. I haven't been able to find a tracklisting yet, but I've come to like it. It's really slow downloading new things here, so finding a new CD amongst her belongings was like getting the new Whatever album by Whoever I would be anticipating. It's pretty drab and lo-fi, but charming in its own rite. There was one band she mentions in her journal that has the lyric "everyone forgets what went before them" called the Vacuums. That's about it so far. I might post it, since I can't find the band online anywhere, and I want people to hear it.

Bananaboy, salute!

A Tree Falls in the Forest

I came up last night to the surface to pouring rain and laughed in spite of myself for getting wet for the first time (outside of regular bathing) when leaving the fucking submarine. I'm surrounded by water daily, and when I decide to go up to the atmosphere, there happens to be torrential rains. This is yet another sign that god hates me.

After toweling off my face and returning to my womb, the Morale, I became fully aware of something: In the last four weeks or so, I've done exactly what I wanted to do for probably the first time in my whole life. When I read about these men who came and died before my time who were famous for just living their lives and recording their exploits, it gives me some hope for those who just do what they want without apology and with (hopefully) minimal preaching. "We all treat grief differently," but in the case of Sylvia, I am oddly set free... despite my metal tomb.

The thing that sets me apart from those famous writers and such who came before is that people read them. I don't write much, and when I do there isn't much anyone hasn't thought or heard before, so I have some excuse, but it's sort of depressing to think that what my father called a "call for attention" is panning out to give me less attention than I got previously.

Womb and tomb rhyme.

Think about it.

The First Dandelion

I found something among Sylvia's things that doesn't make sense to me. She had a book which looks to be pretty old, and is full of short stories, all by authors I can't seem to find online, anywhere. It's called "The Trials of Children" and contains a few illustrations with each story. The first story, which is written by a certain Gerald Finch, struck me, and not just because of Sylvia's notes. I can't find the text online, so I typed it out... I'm going to bed after this. I don't really want to think about it any more today.

I.
A long time ago in a village to the East there lived a pair of orphan children. Their parents, they were told, had been the targets of powerful magic and were never to return. They were a brother and a sister about ten years apart. The people of the village generally watched out for the children who lived in the house of their late parents. They were not bothered, and were offered food by the kind villagers, and the young girl had learnt to grow things and weave baskets to collect berries. They lived a quiet life in the hills, undisturbed.

On a warm summer day, the little boy went out picking flowers for his sister, a habit which he had picked up with the start of the warmer weather. At his young age, the boy’s attention to this task was not easily kept. He chased grasshoppers and butterflies, ran from bees, and tumbled in the summer grass with glee.

Soon he realised he did not know where he was. The boy had climbed stone walls, trekked through tall weeds, splashed in mushy swamps, and rested on enormous felled trees blanketed with the purest emerald moss. Despite losing his way, the boy did not cry for help – he looked out into the field before him and saw a curious thing. He ran over to a group of little grey flowers, soft orbs of feathers held in the centre with brown hands reaching from a white head. They each had a little green straw for a stem. There were only three of them in the whole field.

The little boy picked one from the ground to examine it further, but a gust of wind picked up from the hillside, and, to his dismay, blew all of the feathers away! A thousand little parachutes filled the sky, swirled around, and took off down the hillside. The little boy ran as fast as he could after them, through swamps, around trees, through towering weeds, and over stone walls covered with vines until he lost sight of them, but found himself home.

The boy ran into his little house and tugged at his sister’s sleeve. He did not speak – although his sister, trouble by this, often tried to coax language from him. Instead, the boy pointed and smiled, in hopes that she would come with him. The girl looked at her little brother and was instantly curious at his excitement. Filled with joy and pride, the little boy raced through all the traps of nature and arrived, finally, at the field with his sister right behind him.

There he picked her one of the remaining flowers and presented it, breathing heavily from his journey. She took it into her hand and studied it. Her smile turned to a frown.

“Oh, but this is not a flower, little one. It is ugly and boring. Why play with such things when there are lady slippers, lilies, phlox, and orchids?” she scolded.

The boy began to cry. The girl shook her head slowly and cast the flower aside. The boy was suddenly filled with anger. He ran over to the discarded gem and blocked her way. Their eyes met for a moment, and there was silence. He raised the flower in the air, and, just as before, the winds rose and carried the tiny feathers into the sky in a swirl. They danced around the girl and were swept off over the trees and hills beyond sight. The girl’s eyes widened and were filled with tears.

“I'm so sorry! This is a beautiful thing, little brother, a real a treasure. What a beautiful flower!”

The girl kissed her little brother, and took his hand. They ran to the last remaining flower, dug it up gently, shielded it from the threatening breezes, and took it home. They planted the flower in a prominent spot near the bird bath in the garden, and took a jar from the pantry and placed it over their magic flower.

II.
Every day the little boy would search for more specimens of his beloved flower, and would bring back little gifts for it – pretty stones, bugs, and unusual leaves, - as offerings, in hopes that it would survive. His sister taught him to draw the outdoors, giving him lessons in the grass everyday, and soon the little boy took with him a small pad of paper and pencil wherever he went, to document his findings. Always, though, the flower was his favourite image to draw.

One morning, after a pink moon the night before, the little boy found a little white cat sleeping in the grass. It brushed past his legs and purred. The boy pet the little creature and the pair walked home together. The boy was eager to share the wonder of the flower with his new friend.

Before the boy was able to show off his treasure, the cat spotted a sparrow, relaxing in the birdbath. The little cat surged ahead of his companion and leapt for the bird. The boy’s eyes filled with horror, for as the white blur before him took to the air he sent the sacred jar rolling across the ground. The cat landed with a splash, but came up empty-pawed. Disappointed and damp, the cat hopped to the ground and ran out of sight. A gust of wind followed behind him, taking with it the last of the magic flowers.

Dismayed and wet-eyed, the boy shuffled into the house and sat down at a chair with his back to the window where he remained for the rest of the summer.

Outside, the leaves turned beautiful colours, the animals stored up food for the cold season ahead, and the empty stem of the flower flicked in the breezes, but the boy refused to see any of it. He retreated to his notebook, where he drew frightening images of monsters: trees with faces of men; enormous grasshoppers with razors for hands; and, often, a devilish white cat. His sister worried about him, and each day would ask him if he would join her for a walk in the woods. Every day he kept silent. He still had not uttered a word in his life.

III.
The winter came, and brought with it the most terrible winds and snow the land had seen in ages. By New Year, a young doe, trying to keep warm her twin fawns, was ultimately survived by them. It was not long after that the little boy grew ill.

His sister kept a close watch at him and read to him everyday from the dusty library in the study. He never made any indication that he was listening, but she read anyway.

This went on for a few weeks, and the boy’s condition neither worsened nor improved. One day, however, the sister rose from bed unusually early and found her brother not drawing near the window as he normally did, but instead, curled up on the floor near the fireplace, pale and limp. She rushed over to him and lifted his fevered head. His eyes were barely open and hazy. The sister carried her brother to his bed. After some hours of consulting a healing book, she prepared for him a powerful concoction, and slowly ran it between his parched lips.

There he slept for a week, while his sister wept by the window. The boy had not moved in what seemed like an eternity, and the girl was beginning to feel weak and feverish. The window framed the icy countryside. It snowed hard. Outside she could barely make out the shapes of two young deer, searching for food. The girl’s eyes welled with tears.

Suddenly, a comforting thought came to her. She lifted herself from the old rocking chair, made her way down the stairs to the pantry, and gathered her last loaf of bread. The floorboards were frigid through her thin shoes. She went back to her window, forced it open through the ice and frost. Through the burst of icy wind and snow, she heaved the bread onto the lawn. The deer looked up to the window, and stole away into the wood with the bread.

The girl closed the window. Her reflection frightened her. Her stomach tied in knots. She turned her head to her brother, still breathing lightly.

“If ever we make it through this, little brother – ” her voice was cut off by a series of hacking coughs.

The young boy turned his head slightly.

His sister climbed into the bed, thinking of their mother.

IV.

When the boy awoke, many days had passed. His room was noticeably warmer and bright, but he was alone. His mouth was sticky and tasted of ash, and when he breathed, there was a painful feeling in his ears. After testing his limbs, he decided that he was still alive. Aching, he shuffled down the hallway to his sister’s room.

There she lay, huddled into a ball on the floor, her shivering finally ceased.

Outside in the field, patches of golden flowers with a thousand petals bloomed, waiting to be picked.

Places to live

Places to die

willful destruction

My head is reeling. I feel as if I'm leaking energy from some place between my eyes and the taste in my mouth is expired medicine. When I first decided to engage in "hermetic studies" I thought it was sincerely because I had some thinking to do that could not be done engaged with the surface world. The idea was that there's a harmony with nature, returning to the water, and all the surface sounds blending with the water, resonating and colliding, create an Aum, a peaceful sound. The sound helps with my frustrations sometimes... others, like the past week or so I think it's been, little helps.

After a few days straight of creative work and investigation, I began to lose steam. I felt lost and useless. Every move I made felt meaningless. I was haunted by things about Sylvia I had forgotten - the way she obsessed about her small hands and wanted surgery to make them bigger, her stutter, how once we fell asleep in the woods and she woke up screaming, then cried, and did not speak at all, despite my pressing, for several hours.

It terrifies me to think that no one will know these things, and, according to what she used to tell me, that perhaps I don't even know them. I still don't think I can lie to myself, but every so often I forget what I'm doing, and I don't know if I was thinking something just then, before it - maybe about something terrible but true, or something hideous and untrue which I will someday believe to be true. Great lies are the work of creative analysts. The meaning and subtext of these inventions, accidental or not, are imbedded, imbued from experience and environment. If Sylvia never broke down in the woods, why would I have allowed myself to believe it, and what does it mean? Was her nightmare one of my own?

I've had some time to collect myself from ego paralysis. I read some more of Sylvia's books, some being the critical word. Brothers Karamazov caused me to put it down after the "Grand Inquisitor." I nearly fell back down again. Then I read Notes from the Underground, and was saved, in a sense. It was almost like that scene in the Neverending Story where Bastian discovers that he's not only reading it, but writing it as well - it was eerily familiar, and magic in a way. Sylvia never talked about it, but as I read it myself, and looked at her notes in the margins, I started to well up, and realised two things:

one, that there is only one escape from the crushing weight of existence and metaphysical and emotional suffering.

two, that Sylvia had discovered it.

I start reading Nausea today... and recording more threnodies.

PS, happy birthday to me. 1 april, 1990.

"I could make a career of being blue:
I could dress in black and read Camus,
smoke clove cigarettes and drink vermouth
like I was 17,
that would be a scream,
but I don't want to get over you."
- stephen merritt

Conspiracy

I finally posted a song on purevolume.com. Click on the link below the weird graphic in the upper right of the page to reach it. Love to all.

How I Learned to Stop Worrying

I've been trying to put together a bit of the past for everyone to enjoy. It mainly starts with Sylvia.

She grew up in Grosvenor Dale with her mom, Lisa, and an array of would-be surrogate fathers. One result of her awkward home life was the amount of time she spent outside, trodding through the woods. Her first camera was the gift of one of her mother's suitors. In retrospect, I wonder if he bought it to get her out of the house even more. Even so, Sylvia was homeschooled too, and didn't know many of the local kids. When we first met, she talked about a girl that lived down the road from her, although I've never met her and I'm not sure she ever existed.

Our moms are got to talking when buying the same thing at an art supply store, or, that's how they tell it. Lisa brought Sylvia over when we were about ten. I remember watching City of Lost Children with her and talking about various secret places in the woods, and various theories on some unexplained phenomenae: a mound in the middle of the woods was a deer-fort; the field surrounded by forest was an alien landing site; the foundation of a mill on a stream was a man-made waterfall and likely installed to help the people of the area sleep better at night to the soothing sounds of... falling water. It was a couple years before we got to hang out again, and only after we insisted to our parents to do so.

There were a lot of good times. She was really sort of crazy back then. I wasn't sure I liked that, but I was really impressed with how she knew a lot of interesting stories and would sing songs to herself at the right moments. I learned later that a lot of her stories were invented, the product of a combination of reading a lot and having a boring life in comparison to what she read. We'd go hang out in the loft of my dad's work shed a lot, sometimes watching him work and sometimes Sylvia would tell him a story about Jacques Cousteau. Dad would correct her on some mundane detail and Sylvia would pretend to write it down.

Our parents never said we weren't allowed to date, but on my thirteenth birthday I was sort of told that Sylvia was a nice girl and was welcome any time, but that it would be nice if they got to see her when she was over, instead of disappearing as we often did. It was kind of too late at that point.

The last couple of years our moms have spent more time together than ever, although Sylvia didn't always come along. Lisa has been "taking a break from men" for awhile, and my dad was working a lot at the power plant. When she did come over, sometimes it was awkward for the two of us, because we felt guilty about going off to the woods or the loft because now, whether or not we were making out (i think once we didn't), we'd likely get some parental sass. I still call Sylvia my girlfriend, though, and only now do my parents acknowledge our love's legitimacy. Maybe just to try to make me feel better.

The last six months were really great. We watched Life Aquatic and Royal Tenenbaums about a million times, taking notes with Sylvia crying every time at the end of the former. I finally convinced her to sing with me on some songs, and begged her to play some violin to my guitar, but she was still too shy about it. I don't know...

The first day she was sick we were supposed to hang out. I thought she was sort of blowing me off, but when I saw her I knew she wasn't pretending.

The rest of the stuff I don't think I can really talk about right now. For a couple weeks I didn't really do anything. It was a like a fucked up nightmare trying to do anything - how do you replace or even pretend to heal after such a perfect girl comes around?

Today has been difficult. I woke up thinking about the ending of Science of Sleep, and Sylvia, and how fucked up it all has been.

Showboating and Alarmism

It's been nearly a week since my last confession. Nothing has changed. I received a visit from my good friend ben recently, and it did help a bit. I spent some time above water, and was able to do a full recharge of the sub.

There was a moment, when we were floating on the lake and enjoying cigarettes at night, when it felt like it was almost summer. After more than a decade of training to feel the seasons and the rhythms of schooling - which even I was party to - that first twinge of summer is about the most envigorating sensation I can think of. Looking back a year is sort of bewildering, and thinking forward a year is perplexing but exciting. Then I ran out of gerunds.

The longest topic of discussion was the idle quest for information that we both share. Neither of us feel isolated in the world, despite our relative un-worldliness (or otherworldliness?) to certain city-folk, mainly because of a certain general philosophy about learning. It might be mostly trivia, but it annexes our studies in music and art and culture to a way that gives the most modern perspective our limited minds can arrive at. Knowing that the proper name for Webster Lake, the Morale's headquarters, is the longest place name in the US somehow feels relevant when studying all of these artsy type things. There is no such thing as artistic truth... just pursuit. I'm sure that's been said before, but not from a submarine.

I never wrote about Borges, and I should've. My favourite story can be found here. The narrator tries to find the source of an encyclopaedia article about a country that doesn't exist, but, in telling the story, references books that don't exist... There is more to the story, but I don't want to spoil it for anyone, not that it matters much. The idea kind of creeps me out, like, it sort of makes me scared to be an Atheist for some reason. It just reeks of death. Apparently the story is supposed to have some political implications. I'm no literary analysis major, nor do I presume I will ever become, but I think Borges is more the natural extension of Camus or Kafka than anything else... I feel the same way about living and accepting my reality when I read him as I do they. Which is to say, I sort of want to die.

Anyway, I realised I know nothing about building web pages, so Sylvia's memorial page may be slowed down a bit. I also starting reading Brothers Karamazov. It's long, and I'm pretty sure I'm missing something, but Fyodr is the biggest asshole in history, even though he has some interesting arguments.

One good thing: I created a purevolume account to post some music. I'll have to make a string of them, because you can only have four songs per account, and the compression will likely suck balls. I need to shop around for a good music site to post. Fuck Myspace, naturally.

Pussyfooting

Well this is fucking great. After 36 hours of having no contact with human life (internet down) I'm finally finished with my first and second electronic songs. It's sunny out today, which is nice, because I actually am awake to get some sunshine through the portholes. Natural light is healing, my dad always says. I think he's an idiot most of the time, but it's fucking great to see sunlight.

I had some really fucked up dreams the last couple nights/days. One of them involved living in a series of tunnels where there was no law, no adults, just kids - some of them in their 20s. I don't understand exactly how older kids can act so childish after being in college or whatever. I don't want to be one of them. In the tunnels I just sort of just explored and had wild sex with my dead girlfriend (who was alive in the dream) and random other girls, all clad with post-apocalyptic garb. Needless to say I enjoyed that one a lot.

I don't even know if I can finish doing this stupid blog, or this whole isolationist bit... The last two days have been really bad. I sort of had a panic attack and thought that there was no air coming into the sub or maybe that the CO2 wasn't being filtered. I freaked out and sort of cracked my head against a pipe. This whole exercise is fucking with my head. I'm trying to be productive and try to make something for Sylvia, but I think I may just be causing some real damage. But I don't even care. Part of me wants to die down here. Yes, part of me must die down here.

Songs posted whenver I figure out how to upload them without using shitty Myspace.

all the ghosts

I just woke up. it's 2:17 in the morning. I ended up filling several sheets of graph paper with some terrible drawings and working a bit on that first electronic piece I mentioned. It's really scary to wake up and have it be "late." I don't have any sort of schedule, so it shouldn't matter, but I can't help feel that I'm losing touch with things by getting into this really dissociative routine. Victor says I'm playing isolationist, but I didn't even originally think of it that way. It was just too hard to stay at home and let Sylvia's death pin me to my bed, thiking "what next?"

It is really lonely though. It's easy for a few hours to remember what it was like as a child to have a lot of time alone, playing, learning. I retain focus on one task and follow through. Before it was with K'nex. Now it's with computers, books, and music. Music is probably the hardest. It flows the easiest sometimes, but so rarely is that comfort level there when it was like building a ferris wheel on the livingroom floor out of plastic rods.

But that difficulty is more the case with guitar-based music. With electronic music, I have a clean slate. I don't know anything about how to make it, so it's new and exciting. Every 'breakthrough' I make with it has probably been done to death by others, but I don't care - my girlfriend died of rat shit poisoning and I'm in a submarine. And I'm managing to have fun. On ubuweb I found a nice little treat that Sylvia used to talk about. I'm using it for this electronic thing, although I feel like I'm surgically implanting greatness by doing so.

More things I found out today: "The Morale" is a band name out of Michigan. “Today is Everyday” (the name of my gmail and my intended title of this blog) is a line which appears throughout many life-affirming web pamphlets and is the title of a few blogs. There is even one on blogspot where this blog is hosted.

The idea of the phrase “Today is Everyday” as having some sort of zen, postmodern significance occurred to me a while back when playing some game with Anton about how some sentences were intrinsically true, but not necessarily obvious upon first reading or listening. Additionally, if today =everyday, there is the connotation that today is the culmination of days past and future, not just that today happens everyday. These days, and moreso with each passing one, today is everyday. It could be that every day we get older and closer to death and that an infinite amount of data is born and dead in a single day, but so much that I could never hope to be aware of it all. The fact that several other sources have used this phrase and possibly created it independently of each other sort of strengthens that idea. I'll have to look more into it... I remember reading about some phenomenon where several people in different places invent or do something at around the same time without having any communication between them.

Tomorrow I will make a list of goals.
Tonight, I will take kava and read more Borges.

I have no beers

My apologies to my adoring readers for not posting again last night. When Lucier finished downloading I logged off to save some energy. It was not quite as spectacular as I imagined, but the slowness of the development made it really interesting. I remember hearing some Steve Reich and thinking of it the same way - at first I thought it was silly, but became entranced by it. I passed out without doing any recording, but did a lot of thinking instead.
I realised that today was supposed to be St. Patrick's day, and I have no beers. I thought about Sylvia, and how it's been over a month since the funeral. I came down here as much because of her as anything else, but I haven't really faced it yet. There was no preparation time. She had Hantavirus and no one knew it until it was too late. It's such a ridiculous disease. I'm guessing she got it at the Ramtail factory a few towns over in Rhode Island. She went to get some pictures and probably went into some abandoned building that was contaminated.... that was sort of her thing.
I also realise that this is the first time I've mentioned that Sylvia is dead on this blog. I guess the people that know me already know, and those that don't probably don't care. It's a little dramatic to feel like proclaiming to the world that some one they didn't know died... I just wish that more people got to know her. She was even more shy than me, and most of her friends were mainly mine... I got some of her digital photography and I'm thinking about trying to put together a sort of memorial page to her. She was never all that into online stuff - she was more a book person, but I doubt I could have the discipline to write a book for her. I can barely finish a blog without getting distracted. She would go off into the woods and read for hours at a time or take pictures...
Anyway, I think I may have finished a song this morning, or I'm at least pretty close. I dont' know how the hell I'm gonna upload it, but I'll figure something out. Also, today I started reading one of Sylvia's books, a short story compilation from Jorge Luis Borges. The guy is crazy, but really fascinating. I only got through the introduction so far, but I'm kind of stoked for it. Also, word to Anton. I'm glad things are looking up for you. Come down on the Morale! Bring some Nag Champa or something if you do, though... I think it's starting to smell kinda weird.

It's really quiet in here. I laid on the floor for a few hours today and just listened to the sound of the room, sort of thinking. Kept trying to pick up the guitar and say something, but I don't know if I have it in me. Anyway, the guitar sounds like garbage in this place. I tried putting up some of my blankets on the walls which wasn't as bad, but acoustics won't make a bad song sound good. Like Mick says, "you can't polish a turd."

Part of the problem must be that so much is riding on whatever I do down here. It doesn't really matter so much in the grand scheme of things, but I really don't see what the purpose of living would be if I can't even write a song when I want to. I have an idea, though. On the floor i decided I would just record the sound of the room and use that as an instrument. When I looked up the idea, I found that a lot of classical composers had used similar ideas in the 60s and early 70s. I linked my favourite one, from Alvin Lucier. I'm still waiting for the mp3 from ubuweb to download, but I love the idea. I'll probably post again when it finishes.

The idea got me thinking I should take a stab at is electronic music. I never really tried before, and I used to think it was kind of trite. Now it seems like a pretty cool concept. Traditionalism in general is sort of a hindrance. I'm not sure I want to be the fucking guy with the guitar forever... there are plenty of them already, and if John Mayer is the most famous one at the moment, I might just give it up and learn violin or something. The fact is that beautiful music can be anything. Sylvia was really good at showing me that. No matter how hard-headed I was about hating something she liked, she would just play it over and over again... pretty soon I could tell why she thought it was good. Bands I have to thank Sylvia for: The Magnetic Fields, At the Drive-In, Sleater-Kinney, and Hank Williams, among others.

I started making an electronic song, but I'm not sure when it'll be done. I've been really trying to dig into Protools and start sampling some things. Eventually I'll add some guitar but I don't really know what to play yet...

Still like another half hour before Alvin Lucier is finished downloading. Oh yeah, and I've been going crazy with Wikipedia, so forgive me for all the links going to Wiki. People don't just look shit up like they should. If you're reading something and you don't know what the hell the person is talking about, your ass should be looking it up. But I'm weird and look things up for fun...

From the murky depths of boredom,
Michel

The Ides of March

It's now tomorrow, but today is every day. Yesterday, only a couple hours ago, was March 15th, or the Ides of March. I made it through, though. I found out that in 2001 March 16th was the only day in which no one committed suicide in the UK between 1993 and 2002. I hope to fare as well as those British citizens of 2001 on this March 16th, but here's little to stick around for.
I don't like to be so dramatic, but it's difficult not to. I don't even know why I decided to do this. I've been underwater now for a few days trying to collect my thoughts but instead I keep thinking that it's all just pointless. Just fucking writing about things I don't really understand is just stupid, but I don't know what else to do. I've tried making music, but nothing really feels good enough. There's not much to do on the sub. I just have some books and CDs things to go through. All I've accomplished is getting really fucking good at Tetris and waiting for things to load online. My parents think I'm crazy... it's not that that's new or anything. I'm just glad my dad let me use his sub for awhile. He spent probably more hours working on the fucking thing than with me. He he. Not that I'm bitter or anything. He always promised to let me take the Morale out on my own, but it took him almost a month to finally make good on it and not bring up some shit about responsibility and stuff - but I'm done with highschool now and I'm not even 17 yet. All my friends that weren't homeschooled hated highschool or just dropped out. It's even more bullshit. More than just hiding out in a lake and fucking breaking down and making a blog for no one to read.
It's so vain to think that people want to spend their time reading your ideas, whether or not you have a publishing deal or not... I don't know how famous people can even live with themselves. I mean, people actually listen Ann Coulter, though, so I guess people are dumb enough to waste their time on other people's ideas. How presumptuous of me to think that some one will read this - or even think about it.
I dunno. I'm starting to get pretty tired and really sick of waiting for shit to load on this thing. Best to just power down. Maybe I'll write more later.