stirring

I am not here.  I am not writing.  This is not me.

I don't believe in things.  It's difficult to unlearn this.  It's more than just a perspective; it's habit.

I mean, the very idea of belief is just...silly.  No one wants to be that guy - buying the self-help tapes, nodding knowingly as Tony Robbins pontificates, throwing his hands in the air as a preacher calls for repentance.  We’re above all that, right? It's not really about that guy, though - it's more like a visceral distaste for the kinds of people we believe believers to be. But here’s the thing – maybe clichéd, romantic love is the only love there is.  Reality is earnest, well-meaning, and, well – kind of fucking asinine. It isn’t clever. And this realization doesn’t feel good at all. After a while, it doesn’t feel like anything. To feel one’s life is to stop thinking about it. I’ve said that.  And I haven't felt mine in a while. Can we live without context, without constant critical analysis? It may be a “false consciousness” – but it sure feels nice. Genuine sincerity tends to sound cloyingly insincere. I mean, that pandering Adam Sandler movie may be intellectually offensive – but doesn’t it feel better to like it?  

How do I reconcile...

Ever-burgeoning intellectual curiosity with a visceral hatred of any and all totalizing schemes? A deep-seated aversion to structure with a desire to control it? An instinctive resistance to stability with a fear of ambiguity? Yesterday and tomorrow? This and that? Nihilism and giving a shit?

A desire to do with a refusal to be?

the blathering continues

If a blog reemerges in the middle of the night and no one is around to hear it, does it make a sound? I certainly don't hear anything. I don't know who I'm talking to. I've made a search of...well, both rooms. It's just me.

It's strange, this daylight savings thing. Most of the year, I feel as if I'm racing the clock. Actually, that isn't entirely accurate; I feel as if I'm being pursued by time. I can elude it for a while, ducking into a pint of something strong or one of those jaunty tunes I used to write. But the seconds, the minutes, the hours...they're always there, lurking, pushing their inevitability on me. Temporality is just so fucking insistent. Tonight, I actually lose an hour. It's gone. This day has only 23 of them. But I'm just excited to get more daylight tomorrow. Today is the shortest day of the year, the one day when I actually have fewer hours at my disposal, and I am relatively unhindered by my chronophobic tendencies. Works for me. Now if only the future didn't become the past so quickly...

It's official

As of last night at 8:00, I no longer hate Ohio.

Printer, why must you antagonize me so?

That noise - that godawful noise. It's downright apocalyptic, a cacophony of cringeworthy screeches and buzzy grinding sounds, harsh and unsettling, like nails on a chalkboard for the digital age. The message is crystal-clear: Something is really, really fucked. What monumental catastrophe could possibly have brought about such a hullabaloo?

You need paper.

subtracting days

Was I really present that day if, a few weeks later, it left me with nothing other than a little more sag here, more droop there, and one less day to be alive?

- William Least-Heat Moon

new songs

http://www.myspace.com/thepjexperience

A couple of these have become Sloan Brothers songs, and a couple are just my own demos. Check them them out if you're so inclined.