Even blogging, I'm starting to feel like I don't have much in common with others.
The hints that's true are everywhere:
“Here’s what goes through my head like a ticker-tape: What kind of leader am I? I can’t even get my own shit together. It’s hard to publicly admit that you’re failing or feeling bad – especially when the blogosphere seems to be on a frog-march of relentless positivity. Cupcakes and unicorns! Awesomesauce! Happyhappyjoyjoy!”
"What kind of leader am I?" is NOT on my list of 99 Problems.
My fucking truck is more important.
Some have said, like Krishnamurti, I'm trying to start my own cult (knowingly using the charge as a gambit) but I don't know at this point what, they think, I would preach.
Disdain, maybe?
Disdain, maybe?
My only true connection with Krishnamurti is knowing what beat I'm marching to:
"I maintain that truth is a pathless land, and you cannot approach it by any path whatsoever, by any religion, by any sect. That is my point of view, and I adhere to that absolutely and unconditionally. Truth, being limitless, unconditioned, unapproachable by any path whatsoever, cannot be organized; nor should any organization be formed to lead or coerce people along a particular path. ... This is no magnificent deed, because I do not want followers, and I mean this. The moment you follow someone you cease to follow Truth. I am not concerned whether you pay attention to what I say or not. I want to do a certain thing in the world and I am going to do it with unwavering concentration. I am concerning myself with only one essential thing: to set man free. I desire to free him from all cages, from all fears, and not to found religions, new sects, nor to establish new theories and new philosophies.”
With my spine's issues, I could certainly be Sting's "King Of Pain," but that's about it,...
I've been following you for a long time, don't know exactly for how long but long enough to know that you took a hiatus. It was when I stumbled across a comment you left at Althouse that I knew you were back in blogging action. I prize your anti cult stance and the direct no bullshit warts and all expositions.
ReplyDeleteIve been logging since 2003, I'm a visual artist, and the blog is centered on the flow of ideas that surround and fill my work. The distinction is between the art work and the life that supports it. I've kept a policy of "not letting the know you're hungry", mainly because I think that an artist who doesn't believe in themselves don't merit much of an audience. Reading a whine is different from what you just blogged about and different from what you have divulged about your life.
Maybe difference is between visual art and music, I've never read you confess a lack of faith in your work. Correct if I'm wrong but I don't think you've ever lost faith in your ability to make and know good music.
As for branding, there are shitty brands and good ones. I'm generally happy that people have the power to self publish and I'll take all the good and bad comes with it.
As a side note, I was pleased early on to learn that we were bothin the navy. USS Truxtun in the late 70's.
I've been writing for about forty years, every day, day in, day out, for hours. I'm pretty good at it by now, but I still haven't written that novel. I've started a few. Completed and dumped a couple. Written vivid scenes that would fit in, somewhere, in a complete novel; but I keep coming back to same thing.
ReplyDeleteWTF do I have to say to these people? What message do I want to give them?
Lead? Lead them from what and to what? Take religion away and they'll invent one, be it recycling, Scientology, or aligning their chakras. Teach them the folly of hating one group or another and they'll just hate a different group.
It's the Myth of Sisyphus, dude. That's what art is. You roll the stone up the laborious hill, and watch it roll down.
But that's not necessarily awful. Some seem to have found pleasure in rolling that stone and watching it drop. You just take satisfaction in your effort--silly as it is--to change people for the better.
U.S. Kilauea, also in the late 70s.
ReplyDeleteAnd no, when it comes to my abilities to move a crowd - whether in the visual (which appeared first) or recording arts (which are the most satisfying) - I think my opportunities for a come-back are diminishing, not my abilities. I see these cultural waves form, that I'd love to ride, but then something - and always something overwhelming - keeps sidelining me as I prepare.
I guess all I can say is, after mostly laying in bed for almost a month, the mind wanders. I have no defenses. Never have.
That, too, is enough to make me think, if I could, I'd do a whole album on that one topic. A fighter, forced to endure the slings and arrows of fate, or something like that. A fucked-up, Punk Rock, wheelchair on the cover maybe. A Poison Opera. I think Prince Paul tried something like that once, but more conventionally.
Whatever.
I just wrote today's first post, took some pain pills, made/ate breakfast, and then slept until 5 in the afternoon. Me. The guy who bounds out of bed, making the world flinch. All the talent in the world can't beat that.
I get diagnosed on Tuesday,...
Hang tough. day after tomorrow you get the diagnosis AND the prognosis, so there's still hope. Email me if there's anything I can do.
ReplyDelete