52/52 - We Made It!!!

"How lucky I am to have someone that makes saying goodbye so hard." 

- A.A. Milne

Dear Internauts,

It's over!

2017 is officially complete.

I do appreciate that you have a metric bajillion tons of content to pour through on your daily scrolling, so please know that I am wicked grateful for everyone who's chanced a glance at this weird blog thing I've been doing. We've averaged about 180 views a post, and that means this weekly experiment thing has been the most highly consumed bit of creative output I've ever creatively put out.

Still, the goal was never about how many of you lovely folks I can trick into looking my way. The original idea was simply to make something on the regular. Consistency, after all, is key. And though quality and the exact time/day of the release for each post have wavered, this has been the most consistent I've been on anything in a long time. The key there is that it's completely self-motivated. Sure, it's nice when someone would mention how they'd read this thing, but in large part the only thing that kept me going week to next was the building blocks of having done it before. Despite every way in which I know this could have been more polished, precise, punctual, or popular, the achievement of even putting up a blog post every week for a whole year was somehow it's own cycle of motivation.

We've been through a lot together. Sure, it's pretty one sided, but I still want you to know it means a lot that anyone is out there letting me slide a few slices of my madness your way. This time last year, I had just moved in with my aunt, uncle, and cousins and was back in Massachusetts for the first time since college. The following months were there own special kind of struggle as I realized that just leaving PA was not enough to suddenly fix my life or mind. Even as I was able to find some temp work and pay my own rent at their house, living with family in that area turned out not to be the right fit for me finding a way to transition into full independence. Obviously, life in that neighborhood and that house wasn't what either me or my family there had expected. When they told me it was time to go, I didn't have any other option but to return to my folks' in PA, which, honestly felt like such a huge failure.

I know I'm blessed to have parents who support me to the extent and with such love as mine do. Their acceptance, encouragement, and accommodation has kept me not just alive but somewhat stable for these past several years as everything else has just utterly shattered. Despite my understanding of and personal experience with depression, it's still so easy to think of my lack of success in certain endeavors or inability to reach certain goals as a failure of self, indicative of a lack in character. When family or friends would hint or straight up tell me that I just think too much or just need to try harder or get over it, it was difficult not to use that as ammunition in order to sabotage myself. Sure, I know that they come from a place of caring and misunderstanding the truths of living with mental illness, but with everything else going on in my head, being able to organize what outside messages were useful and which could be discarded was often too much to handle.

Thus, for the large majority of 2017, my inner drive was simply to stay out of everyone's way. Struggling to work up the energy to leave my bed, much less leave the house, was hard enough, but the instant I began to consider what possible impact my existence might have on others, all motivation quickly vanished. This made its way into my songwriting and even onto this blog, where the topics of what I expressed funneled into a self-centered spiral. After all, who gives a damn about my opinion on politics, social issues, or even human interaction much beyond that which I could directly explain from personal experience? The question of it anyone even cared about that could only be ignored because I had a blog to write, so in that way, the pressure of a self-imposed schedule allowed for me at very least to feel bad for myself in writing once a week.

I don't think I believe that my songwriting was vastly better when it was almost entirely focused on social justice matters, but at least then I wrote songs about something. Musically, I've been almost entirely on a dry spell this past year, and I can trace that directly to my lack of confidence conspiring with my lack of attempts made to create something new. As this is technically supposed to be a music blog, I've gotta be real with you folks, I have not picked up the guitar in a while. While I'm starting to believe again that I have something unique to give both musically and lyrically, I've too long let fear of disappointment, lack of motivation, and worry over how it might be received keep me from creating any new music.

I've met far too many songwriters who are way more talented than I am yet fail to produce new content due to getting caught up in the day to day mundanity and stresses of adult worker/consumer existence. I'm not saying that providing for yourself and your family is a bad excuse, but it's still an excuse. And if my excuse is my thoughts and feelings based in mental illness, well, I've seen over the past several years how that will only continue to be my excuse indefinitely.

For a long time, I knew exactly what I wanted to be. Whenever a big part of that would break down, I always had something else deeper inside to hold up as the core of something new. I'm a writer, a creator, an artist of some kind. Even without faith and a religious culture, I am still someone who passionately holds tight to and expresses what I believe to be right and wrong. Even when I feel alone and lost and like a failure when it comes to relationships, I'm still someone who loves and empathizes. Even when I can't stand/am terrified of other people in general, I still recognize something of our shared humanity. All this adds up to something, and most of the time being okay with who I am means being okay with the unknown. Most of the time being okay with the unknown means not being okay in the least.

Not being okay is okay.

I'm not anywhere near sure about where I go from here. Well, I can hope for certain things like independence, confidence, friendship, and security, I've also seen how fragile those things can be.

• Independence: I've learned how important cooperation and accepting help from others is.
• Confidence: I've learned that acting in the midst of self-doubt is all too often the only way any action gets done. 
• Friendship: I've learned that since friendships come and go, it's alright to feel sad, confused, and heartbroken, but the way other people treat us is ultimately far more an indicator of who they are than who we are. Thus, learning to love and be confident in myself is necessary, because the past isn't gonna change, but my reaction to it can.
• Security: I've learned over and over again that any level of safety is never enough to feel ready to take a risk and is always just as fragile as the next trauma. I'll face reality and make a choice under the weight of stress and pain, on good days and bad, because moving forward, the only certainty in life is change.  

Y'know I'd love to read down in the comments or on twitter or facebook or wherever, what your goals are for this coming year. I know new years resolutions tend to be more a source of eventually guilt/grief than continued inspiration, but if nothing else, please be encouraged by the fact that I wrote 52 blog posts since last January. I said I was gonna do something and I did it. Wanna know my secret? I just did it. Even when I felt like I wasn't "up to it", I did it anyway.

Most of the time the desire necessary in order to accomplish a task and the desire we think we need are nowhere close. I can honestly say that most days this past year, I didn't want to even open my eyes. I feel like I've simultaneously somehow slept through the past 52 weeks and not slept for the past 52 weeks. I didn't even want to get up and hang out with my parents today, but I did because I'd promised them I'd make buffalo cauliflower bites and play card games. When I was so tired I kept hitting snooze and falling back into the weird nightmare I was having about growing up on a dust farm, I was not incredibly enthusiastic about figuring out the breading and sauce and how to use the toaster oven like a real oven.

But I didn't need to be incredibly enthusiastic. I just needed to do it. I only needed the absolute minimum of wanting to. Like when I got a root canal a few months back. I didn't have to really, really want to go to the dentist. I just had to want to enough to get up, get dressed, and go. How many times in my life have I gotten up, gotten dressed, and gone somewhere? The process is practically habitual once started, and yet before getting started why do I feel like it's either gotta be I'm 100% ecstatic about it or it's impossible? That's not necessary.

For many of you I imagine this is the process for going to your job. Hopefully, you all enjoy your job. I've never had a job I particularly liked, and I don't really understand people who do like their jobs. It's kinda like all the worst things about school plus the stress of being treated as less than a person by everyone around you, not just the bullies at recess. However, when I have had a regular job or even a temp job, the going and the doing was never the worst part (it was the people mostly). The trick was always just before that, like working out. Once I'm in my workout clothes and on the machine or headed somewhere it's not too bad, but just tricking my feet into socks and sneakers semi-regularly is worse than any amount of reps. It's all a mind game.

All that to say, I'm not gonna just make a list of promises to you or myself about what I want to do this year in vague terms I'll soon fail to fulfill.

Instead, here are some things I don't promise, big and small, but am just gonna do because I'm just gonna do 'em.

Everyday, I will:
- Take my medication
- Play guitar
- Write a page
- Eat a vegetable
- Take a walk
- Draw for an hour

Every week, I will:
- Apply for a job (until I get one)
- Look for a therapist (until I get one)
- Work on the Painkiller music video (until it's finally done)
- Write a song
- Go to an open mic

Every month, I will
- Read a book
- Post an acoustic song up on Youtube
- Post an update on this blog*

*I'll post more often than this, but my goal is to create more content of many different kinds, not just blogposts, about which I'll keep you lovely folks updated via this site and other social media.

Also...
- No more buying sweets and/or deserts for myself
- No more self harm
- No more looking at pictures and/or following social media of former friends who no longer give a damn about me

Here it is, folks, after the wondrous monstrosity that was 2017 for myself and so so so so many others and situations around the world, I don't exactly expect 2018 to be the absolute opposite. 365 days is a whole lot of time. 52 weeks is way more than we can really take into account all at once.

The joy and pain of hoping is that it either has nothing to do with what I can control and therefore is like a ball of positivity floating just out of reach OR it is completely within my control and therefore is just something I gotta do or it won't get done.

For most of this year, I couldn't visualize who or what I wanted to be because I didn't believe that I could be anyone or anything at all. Believing isn't enough to get anything done, but it's usually a necessary first step. The rest might just be all about doing it anyway, no matter how you feel.

Sometimes I won't have the right energy or mood to do what I think I should. That is a reality of life that I've had to come to accept. Still, the kind of positive attitude I need to help me survive those times is strengthened by what I make out of the times when I do have just enough energy to do something. It needn't be perfect by my or anyone's standards, but as it's all I have to work with, then I can do something with it or not.

And therein again lies the hope, that someday I can live with a little more empathy, confidence, and passion, and a whole lot less fear, despair, and hate.

Here's to 2018.

Here's to you!!!

Thanks for being there this past year, every week, and as always...

Thanks for reading,
Odist

51/52 - Happy Hollandaise

"Coming back to where you started is not the same as never leaving."

- Terry Pratchett

Dear Internauts, 

Thanks for reading, 

Odist

50/52 - I Don't, Because... (What Holds Ya Back?)

“Know your literary tradition, savor it, steal from it, but when you sit down to write, forget about worshiping greatness and fetishizing masterpieces.” - Allegra Goodman

Dear Internauts, 

Hey! We've reached the 50th entry in this year of weekly blogs. It's hard to believe that we've come so far and are almost at the end of 2017. I want to thank you for sticking with me this far. Feel free to reward yourself. Go see a star wars. 

Anyways...

Negative self-characterization forces a disproportionate emphasis on inability, or, in less obnoxious terms, I suppooooooooooose I don’t do things because I think I can’t do those things. Rather, I don’t believe in my ability to be successful in the attempt. 

Success—that ever-nebulous fluidic frustrater—readily adapts to my insecurity. 

I don’t because it won’t be my best.

I don’t write a song, because it won’t be the best song I’ve ever written. 

I don’t write a novel, because it won’t be the best story I’ve ever told with the best words in the best order and structure. 

I don’t draw a comic because I can’t draw well enough to convey the images in my mind. 

Most inconveniently, this crushing doubt often waits to fall until I’ve walked partway into the booby-trapped house of trying and, like a bulbous amateur, stepped unknowingly through the trip-wire of comparison. 

I don’t because it won’t be the best.

I don’t write a song, because it won’t be a hit. 

I don’t write a novel, because it won’t be an instant classic/bestseller. 

I don’t draw a comic because it won’t be a staggering work of genius which both reflects the best of and elevates the medium, blending words and pictures with perfect clarity and style to a degree reminiscent of while also transcending all my favorite graphic novels from Fun Home to Maus to Sandman to Cable and Deadpool. 

This is certainly not helped by the nagging conflict arising from consuming some mediocre piece of media and simultaneously reflecting on how much better I could do and how I could not even come close to the very basics of how it got made. Sure, for movies, plays, comics, and even songs, there’s usually anywhere from a handful to a couple thousand people behind the project. That doesn’t stop me from fantasizing about popping into one aspect of the production and managing to destruct the whole circus from the inside out. With novels or my songwriting, though, there’s just me facing down the glare of greatness. No matter how many writing blogs, interviews, quotes, or lectures remind me that the first draft is always (and is supposed to be) awful, the fear of ultimate failure prevents me from even taking that little leap. 

I don’t because it won’t be the best right away.

Truth is, I have boxes of notebooks full to the point of illegibility with songs, poems, and story fragments I wrote as a kid. Like some kind of creative stomach bug, I couldn’t help but puke up ideas. And just like literal vomit, they stink, make my insides hurt, make my eyes water, and are full of half-digested chunks of stuff made by other people that used to look appealing. Still, they exist, and maybe that’s worth something. After all, instead of even trying to keep creating, am I now just paging through some five-star cookbook without even setting the pot to boil? 

From an enormous accumulation of junk, there might be a line worth saving here or there. From the unadulterated outpouring of thought run-off, maybe some semblance honest expression. From the mad dash for my phone or a pen and scrap paper, maybe enough obscure notations to begin a shaping. 

It’s optimistic, sure, and we both know that’s not my style. However, this shift from writing and drawing and playing and imagining in excess to this dry sense of listless wandering didn’t happen in a bubble. Adulthood isn’t some concrete robotic function of assimilation wherein we shed the youthful, foolish flesh of wonder and delusion. 

I don’t because it won’t be “perfect”.

For a heaping chunk of my life, I could measure success in letter form and/or percentages marked in red pen. For years, at regular intervals I would not only be told whether or not I was succeeding in my role as a person but to what extent. Not only that, but I was surrounded by a very distinct range of my peers, starting with the year we started breathing on our own. Breaking it down further into the location where our parents moved us then into (sometimes grades or interest based but most often) completely random class groups of fifteen to thirty-five, we were lined up in rows and tested on the consumption and regurgitation of information, all of it preached at us as if were the most important thing we would hear that day forever. Pretty soon, biases formed and vertical mobility became something of an illusion. Do well enough early on and the expectation of future perfection is implicit and harshly monitored. Do poorly enough early on and the expecation of even having a future is moderately considered at best. Also, sometimes they made us run laps. 

But now I’m supposed to be some kind of adult. Like, I’m supposed to have been some kind of adult for a little over nine years now. Sure, there’s college or whatever, but even nearing the end of my junior year in high school, I was already realizing the standards for excellence among my peer group had started to dematerialize. After decades of having to know what they wanted I had to suddenly know what I wanted. In my case, I didn’t wanted to try this higher education thing, but my settings were all still stuck in what my default authority figures wanted for me. I’d trusted them so far without an inordinate piling-up of life-threatening situations, but then it turns out that adulthood may literally be trying to kill me. 

I don’t because adulthood is literally trying to kill me.  

The life of a child and teen is designed to make you into something, while everything after that seems to be about being that something. Or maybe it’s about rejecting that something? Coming to terms with it? Deconstructing it? 

I don’t know. Do you know? Is anybody out there? HELLOOOO!?!!

Besides the fact that my peer group is more obscure, diverse, and several billion times larger, there is no longer an obvious score card for success. Okay, so we can draw a nice parallel between how grades “aren’t everything” with how now money “isn’t everything”. Of course, grades can determine a lot of your future and that future can determine a lot of your finances and finances can be the difference between both where you live and, well, if you live. 

Y’know, money isn’t the key to happiness, but since Donny’s parents could afford to send him to summer camp where he made a nice lanyard, whether or not he ever finds the key to happiness, at least he’ll have a place to put it. 

But hey, being happy isn’t everything either. Everything isn’t everything, so what does that matter? 

If the only mirror I have to look at is a photo of someone else, I’m gonna miss a few things.

I don’t because I don’t. 

If I look at a cup of flour or a single egg and can’t see a birthday cake, that’s rational. 

If I look at that flour or that egg and get upset it’s not a birthday cake, that’s stupid. 

If I look at the four or the egg and can both picture the birthday cake and recognize that they’re not the same thing, that’s perspective.

When I make pancakes instead and decide not to compare them to the birthday cake that could have been, that’s growth. 

And  “when the moon hits your eye like a big pizza pie, that’s amore.”

I do because I must. 

If nothing else, there’s always compulsion. If I leave a little blood at the scene, it may not be the perfect crime, but it will still be mine. 

Thanks for reading, 

Odist

49/52 - Leaving the Boat (an overextended metaphor)

"Death is certain, replacing both the siren-song of Paradise and the dread of Hell. Life on this earth, with all its mystery and beauty and pain, is then to be lived far more intensely: we stumble and get up, we are sad, confident, insecure, feel loneliness and joy and love. There is nothing more; but I want nothing more." - Ayaan Hirsi Ali

Dear Internauts,

Imagine spending your whole life on a boat. Every day is about the nautical. Everything is the sea and the parts of the boat and everything to do with sailing. You've seen land maybe but never landed. And then one day you just casually wonder out loud where the boat is headed. You've spent every day of your life in the mindset of one on a sailing journey, but when the idea of direction or destination is brought up, it's quickly hushed or dismissed. The boat is a vessel of transportation and yet transportation is kept vague and obscure.

Now, for the first time in your life, the boat is not the world but a part of the world. And you are not a boat-person but a person on a boat. The idea is confusing and incomplete, but could you be a person on an island? You've seen people go overboard before. Some drowned and some were saved, but what if there was another option? You'd seen people on other boats passing by. They did not drown just because they weren't on your boat. The people who waved from land did not die or beg frantically to come aboard your boat for fear of the land they stood on. So you begin to question those who were once on land but now sail with you. They all so prefer the boat that they now talk as if they too had been there all their life, the language and variety of life before fading into a flat, colorless void.

You sail on and on. You are good at it. You know all the ropes and knots and tides and jargon. You don't have the skill or the words to express this disquiet in you. You do your best to keep sailing, though the disquiet grows.

Then one day you wake up and feel so strange. You climb to the deck and it bows and bends before your eyes. You can't find your footing. You hold tight to the mast but lose your balance. Your fellow sailors try to help but they can't understand. You can't possibly describe it, but for the first time in your life, you're seasick. Dizzy and nauseous, you trip and fall off the bow.

The waves take you down. You can almost hear them yelling for you. They throw a line, but the water is too rough. You are pulled too far away. You pump your legs and arms and gasp for the surface.

When it seems like all is lost, you find yourself treading water. Cautiously, warily, you swim back to the rope and let them pull you back up. They celebrate your return by quickly getting you back to work on deck. You're happy for the familiar purpose and the safety, but you can't help but feel a bit used.

When next you see land, you can't help but wonder what it would be like to reach it. Your queasy stomach returns and you can't ever find your balance the same. Passing an island one night, you take a reckless chance and dive into the water. Using your newly learned skill, you swim to the beach. In the shallows, you stand up. You lie on the warm sand and you eat the citrus fruit from the trees and you look, for once, out at your boat from afar. For the first time in your life, you feel truly still.

You return to the boat, but this time they don't throw you a rope. You climb up and try to begin your work again, but when they see the sand left by your feet, your fellow sailors become afraid. Some are offended, others incensed. When asked, they say they aren't acting any differently, but soon they don't talk to you as much as talk at or about you. You do your best to clean up any sand, but they see it where there is none. Soon, you find your cabin has been filled by another. Even your job is taken eventually. You're always welcome on the ship, they say, because where else is there to be.

Years later, in some desert city, you'll find a picture of the ocean and on it some ship sailing, an awful lot like your old one. You'll write a letter perhaps, to put in a bottle someday, and visit the beach when you can. You'll wonder if the sailors ever think of you. You'll rub the old callouses on your hand and turn the page to a picture of a jungle or field, never quite feeling like any one place is the right place.

When you ask those around you where they're headed, sometimes they'll tell you. But even when they don't know the answer, they can understand the question.

Sometimes you wish you'd never come to land or fallen off the boat. Often you wish you'd drowned that day. You never quite forget the sea-shanties. You never quite get the taste of fish out your mouth. You never stop missing the smell. The scars and rope burns never heal all the way.

And even on land, you still sometimes feel seasick.

But some night, without you hardly noticing, you closed your eyes for the first time in a bed and, as you drifted off to sleep, you didn't feel the waves.

Thanks for reading,
Odist

48/52 - Digiventure

Dear Internauts,

I think I spent the past two weeks half asleep. It may have something to do with winter setting in, but if we're honest, this kind of deep descent has happened at all times of the year.

What got me moving again was the other day when I went to check my phone for the time (and date), and it just wouldn't turn on. No charge or pressing two buttons at once or whatever would do the trick. Sure, I'm not exactly anyone's emergency contact, but on the very off chance of something happening, I forced myself to roll across the floor in various directions till I looked slightly human.

The first place I took it said they had no idea, and the second place required me to go to somewhere I'd never been to without being spoken at me from the little box—currently deceased. As if in some kinda period piece, I sauntered over to some chaps on the sidewalk and queried for directions. They disagreed and gesticulated something about an overpass. I funneled the averages of their answers through my jittery skull, the effect of somehow both too much and too little sleep. Plus, I'd now talked to three strangers for the first time in as many weeks. My morning brain pills strained out across the sweating ruffles of gray matter.

Half an hour or so and the signs gave up on my destination, but I hadn't. The sudden appearance of a fitting road bent my neck to cracking. A city of consumption. Between my bed in mushroom county and the touch screen maps of the mall, I'd travel two decades and yet people still leave their trash beside stone fountains. I sketched this one as I waited for my appointment, omitting the brown paper bag for artistic license, counting the seconds by not counting them. Screw perspective, I thought, and kept the eraser in my pocket.

The phone was dead. There was no denying that. Blame is corporate lubricant, but in this case I got off cheap as free. Their fault. New phone. Same phone. New same. Still no calls, so I could've slept in.

The process of passwords and codes and next and next and do you agree kept me back and forth enough times that they set me up with one of the ones they give extra training. Still, the reasoning for technological distress is the same as it's ever been. 'It shouldn't be doing that' works well enough so long as the outcome is that it does eventually do what it should. (Is that what parenting is like?) He, the genius and seventh stranger I'd talked to that day, managed to be disarming enough from the revelation/admission that he too is into art and music. More than into, he's a composer, engineer, studio pianist, and commercial artist who's worked on albums, commercials, tv pilots, and years of other varied gigs. Talk of what tech is available/affordable to the most cutting-edge apps and gadgets to finding a balance between work and art as work. Eventually, my phone fixed itself, and I realized I'd had an actual conversation with another human being. At least I think that's what those used to be called.

I slept through the next two days, I think. The plot-lines and characters of my own dreams become more complex and harder to escape in times like these. It's not simply a matter of the physical energy to do activities so much as the mental capacity to imagine a motivated self into existence.

Today I tuned every string on my guitar down a half step, and it was like a whole new instrument.

In case you were wondering, as someone who lives most of my life in the past, there really isn't much of a future here.

Thanks for reading,
Odist

47/52 - Great-ish Expectations

“There was a long hard time when I kept far from me the remembrance of what I had thrown away when I was quite ignorant of its worth.”
― Charles Dickens

Dear Internauts,

In general, I find happy people to be the most disappointing.

They can be disagreeable, even absurd to the point of disgust. However, the root of this perceived vulgarity is not the inherent wrongness of their mood but the gap in perspective between that of the happy person and those of us upon whom they inflict themselves. This irreconcilable dysfunction is, sadly, not their fault. Nor is it necessarily ours either.

At fault for this whole mess is the performative nature of existence.

This nature leads to one of the most compelling aspects of artistry—the utter meaningless of intention in the face of an audience. Perhaps there’s enough of a schism between creation and interpretation that it is impossible for anyone to experience the original truth of a work. Or rather the original truth of any work is how far removed it is in every instance and every step from the design of its creator.

If a story exists at all outside the telling (or the hearing/viewing, for that matter), it exists incompletely. The incomplete does not always necessitate completion, except of course when it comes to social pressure. And who better to provide that pressure than the audience, the very mechanism of its completion. But who knows what they might think or feel or yawn about this put-together puzzle in their putting together of it?

We think our experience of art is to receive it and then, as separate beings, construct some outside response as if to form an uniquely divisible creation. Of course that makes plenty of sense on the surface, but one scarce look at our responses shows that we are in the tumultuous throws of our own unbroken sequence of influences. Every symptom is a side-effect.






So I disagree with my previous absurd accusation that intention is meaningless. It's not that it's meaningless but rather that it's meaning is not found in its independence. Intentions declare meaning through what they reveal of influence, which continues the cycle through the effect the intended work has on those across the divide from the intention, who are under their own weight of influences. In sharing their response to the created work, the audience does not become the creator but rather reveals the public face of a creation already in the work from the moment of their exposure to the original work (which itself is of course not the original). Everything is a response to everything else.


Like the brilliant post I saw on tumblr earlier this week about how everyone in my generation had a Twilight phase. You either had a pro-Twilight or an anti-Twilight phase, but in either case you most certainly had a Twilight phase.

I think this can be true of any movement, genre, form, or expression that gathers any substantial following. Then again, you don't even need two people to have a disagreement; one will usually suffice.



I mean all this twisting illogic to say this: a big issue with any pretense of purity in critique that I rarely see brought up in online discourse is how big a role our expectations play in our experience of a work. I'm not talking about how closely a film stuck to the supposed "promises" of its trailer, because if we're honest, the trailer is simply a far more expensive (though oft a bit more informative) cover by which we should not judge the proverbial book. This runs far deeper. In the veins of any audience member or reader or listener or passerby runs the blood of an ecosystem in action. The memories, emotions, and all the drippy bits of homeostasis with which one enters into a relationship with a created work not only serve as goggles through which we view it but an entire suit of moist and jiggly armor in between it and our sense of self-awareness.


I love going to the movies by myself and being the only person in the cinema. Despite my severe introverted nature, I also find myself enjoying—on occasion—the wondrous wave of serendipity which occurs when a crowded cinema and I can join in the experience of a movie together. It can be funnier when everyone else is laughing and more breathtaking when my breath isn't the only one being taken. I don't like it because it feels icky and social, but there truly is a transformative aspect to the communal experience of art.

Of course, don't you dare talk in the theater or you ruin everything and should be made to pay for everyone else's ticket if you do.




In the parking lot, on the drive home, the next day, or later online, there is, however, the discourse. Not only is my own mind racing with a billion thoughts a second about what I've just experienced, but now it contends with the weight of everyone else's opinion. How often is it that said opinion isn't even their own anyway but just the sort of common jelly mold ball of meh that forms from the collective dilutions of so many brains only wanting to think as hard about something as they need to so that it stays enjoyable? Easy. Fun. Or fun to destroy.


Deep in that mire, we find the chameleonic shell of expectations—

When I hear Doctor Who, I picture David Tennant.

When I see the words The Joker, I hear Mark Hamill's uproarious laughter.

When someone mentions the president, I have to check myself for a moment before I break down in tears because Jed Bartlett is a fictional character, and I very much doubt the conversations in the hallways of the west wing of the white house these days sound much anything at all like something written by Aaron Sorkin.

When I think of the beach, my feet brace for running on knife-sharp rock piles and the hair on my arms stands out straight from the chilled-to-the-bone cold water.

To some, the crowded calamity of a city is a nightmare most dreadful. To me it will always be a dream of home.

And there is not a single work of art, film, book, or song that has brushed by my self-symptomatic shell of existence which has not been absurdly thrown into a strange perspective by it.

AND THIS IS ART!?!!!

Yup, this is the stuff we make and share which we think of as the most poignant, the most transformative, the most persuasive, the most piercing, the most affecting.

So...

How much more are our experiences with the mysterious, complex, fuzzy, weird-o wonders known colloquially as "other people" affected by our shell of experience-based expectations, moods, and manners?

I'm not even sure what I want, so why am I so continuously disappointed when I don't get it?

Thanks for reading,
Odist









46/52 - Sitting Around Waiting for the World to Change

Dear Internauts,

This past local election, I sat in a meeting room near the library/police station and handed voters their ballots. It helps me feel like I'm involved and actually participating in the political process in a way that doesn't make me wanna throw up. Plus, it's a way I can force myself to spend eight-ish hours out in public around people without going into a complete panic attack. It's a small town and a small time election, so I spent most of the time reading, but it's also a decent way to experience one of the few happy aspects of politics—participation without fighting. Sure, you still have to walk past the two party booths standing the mandated legal distance from the front of the building, but they're a bit less boisterous than they were last time I worked the polls (November of 2016). If you'd like to be involved in your local election, it's not a bad way to spend a morning, afternoon, or both if, like me, you've yet to be called back from the endless number of menial labor jobs to which you've applied.

After all, if I'm gonna continue to cheer the idea that the only politics that really matter are local, then I might as well back it up with some sort of involvement, right?

Remember how I mentioned going to that TEDx event a few weeks back, well one of the best things that the first speaker did in her talk on composting was to demonstrate ways in which her organization made it as easy as possible for local restaurants to participate. Too often, "causes" do everything they can to make you feel guilty instead of inspired. Please remember those are NOT the same thing. As someone caught in the ever-shifting tumult of emotional tempests, any speaker who does more than make me feel flattered or insulted has my attention far more often than the usual quick-sell.

Don't just tell me I should do something. Make me aware of a way I actually can.

For an example, I'd like to introduce you to Resistbot, an easy to use tool to help you send a message to your government representatives.

All you have to do is text 'RESIST' to 50409.

From there, Resistbot will walk you through the steps to send a message directly to your Senators, House Representative, President, and/or State Governor. It does all the work of getting the message to them, all you have to do is make the message.

If you're like me and don't enjoy talking on the phone but can spend a minute texting a simple message, this is an extremely helpful way to get involved.

Perhaps it's especially important to you that the FCC not kill Net Neutrality, so your ability to read weekly blogs by obscure songwriters isn't hampered in the name of selfish business interests. Just sayin.

Anyways, media roundup time!

I recently finished reading THRAWN by Timothy Zahn. If you're into Star Wars books, this is one of the very best of the new canon. Focusing on the career rise of a blue-skinned, red-eyed, tactical genius from the outer reaches of the galaxy far, far away within an Imperial Navy that is decidedly anti-alien, Zahn's brilliant writing expertly manages to weave the technical military apparatus of the Galactic Empire with fascinating strategy, compelling character development, intelligent yet relatable dialogue, and a smart display of blending previous mythos with an exploration of the new. Great read.

Yes, I did see both Thor: Ragnarok and Justice League. I enjoyed both of them, but don't really have much to say about either besides that. I think they're both worth seeing if you enjoy these kinds of films, Thor especially. I think Wonder Woman is the best of the DCEU so far, but that's not really a novel opinion at this point. If you want to see Justice League done really well, watch the animated series from 2001 or read the Grant Morrison run of comics. My favorite Justice League story is a very weird one called Identity Crisis, which first inspire my love for Elongated Man. Also, if you liked Ragnarok and want to know more about one of the stories which inspired part of it, I'd def recommend Planet Hulk, wherein you can get a lot more in-depth on the characters Korg and Meek.

As for amazing movies you should def make it a point to see ASAP, I have to recommend Lady Bird. Written and Directed by the astounding Greta Gerwig (Frances Ha!, Miss America) and starring probably my favorite actress right now, Saoirse Ronan (How I Live Now, Brooklyn, The Lovely Bones, Atonement, Hanna, The Grand Budapest Hotel), this is def going in my favorite films of 2017. It's seriously unlike anything I've seen before. Hilarious to the point that I actually couldn't hear some parts because the audience was laughing so loud, poignant to the point that I was legit stunned, with some of the best acting and writing you'll see this year.

Honestly, there's something about dramas with comedy that I tend to find their jokes hit so much better than straight up comedies. Both Lady Bird and The Big Sick were far funnier to me when they were being funny than so many movies trying to be funny throughout. Maybe I just have a terribly irrelevant sense of humor, or maybe there's something about getting me to really dig into the absurdity and meaning of these circumstances (or both). Make me laugh till I cry and cry till I can't help but laugh, I don't know. Anyone relate? This can be done terribly too, of course (as can anything, I suppose), because with all the action films I see that try to inject comedy throughout, there can be definite criticism made of taking away from the weight of the dramatic with too many jokes. Both Guardians of the Galaxy films and the recent Thor film missed a few points for me due to not letting some important moments be as emotionally resonant as they could be. It's okay if we're not always laughing. But then again, maybe it's a backlash against the super-grimdark tone of so many would-be blockbusters that folks seem to loathe. I think there's a great balance to find there, and honestly I'm fine with dark, gritty, and sad if that's what a film really needs. I think maybe my spectrum of allowance for darkness is a bit broader than maybe the common movie goer, because I learned a long time ago that my sense of humor is both so tiny as to be non-existent at times and weird enough to be clueless as to what most folks will enjoy. I try to fit some sort of humor into my writing, but the truth is I'm stunned by what most people find funny or don't. But then I've read that many writers struggle with truly knowing what in the world people will find funny. I think that's okay. Funny can be great, but I think meaningful is more important. So maybe that's why I prefer dramadies over straight comedies. Helping me feel joyful wins over trying hard to make me laugh.

This blog is brought to you by me being sick and sleeping/not sleeping through the past two days.

Also, one of you lovely readers asked for a drawing of the box analogy from last week.

Hope this works for ya ;)

Thanks for reading,
Odist

45/52 - Boxes and Boxes

"We are all poets or babies in the middle of the night, struggling with being." - Martin Amis

Dear Internauts,

1) I read Kevin Smith's 2013 memoir, Tough Sh*t: Life Advice from a Fat, Lazy Slob Who Did Good, several months after leaving college. I don't remember too much of it, but what sticks in my mind is a lesson he picked up from director George Romero (“I don't think you need to spend $40 million to be creepy. The best horror films are the ones that are much less endowed.”). I'd do the particular story a disservice to try and retell it, but basically Smith wanted to make his own film but felt hindered by his lack of resources, connections, and position. Thus he decided to make a film about working at a convenience store, and Clerks remains probably his most famous work. Shot relatively cheaply from a script he wrote and starring his friends. The lesson, he wrote, being that the more resources you think you need in order to accomplish your goal—the more roadblocks you're setting up before you—the more excuses you're giving yourself to stop pursuing it. Figure out the best way to make your goal using your limitations to your benefit instead of telling yourself you can't do anything until the situation is optimal.

2) Last Thursday, my folks and I went to a TEDx event featuring several great speakers who presented eighteen-ish minutes each on a variety of topics. They were all interesting, but what stuck with me the most was actually this video they played from artist Phil Hansen. If you haven't already seen it (or even if you have), I def recommend taking the time to watch it.

[tl;dw - Basically, in art school, Hansen developed a nasty hand tremor which prevented him from continuing on his current stylistic path. Lost, he allowed this setback to drive him from his goals, dreams, and best self until he purposefully set forth to reclaim those ideas in new ways despite the troubles he perceived as blocking his path forward. Through this determination, he discovered a refreshed sense of creativity by embracing his limitations as a part of himself, rather than fighting against them. From there, he began to explore other mediums, styles, and concepts for his art, setting up purposeful parameters as a way to inspire creativity instead of letting those borders hinder him.]

3) I've loved wolves pretty much my entire life. They're pretty much my favorite animal. A common idea about wolf pack social structure is that of the Alpha. This is the one at the top who keeps everybody else in check, gets to eat first, and gets first dibs on a mate. Well, this has been the thinking for a long time, and I believed it from the stuff I'd read and seen. However, over the past year I've been reading a lot about how the whole Alpha male, etc stuff is not really true to nature. Sure it exists, but the major research done to confirm it was/is based for the most part on wolves held in captivity. Specifically those who were strangers before being put in the same enclosure would form these hierarchies out of the immediate necessity for order. That's not to say that their aren't leaders of packs in the wild, but rather that the conditions of captivity necessitated in the wolves a power structure built on violence, control, and subordination. In the wild, a more organic, familial support system can develop depending on circumstance.

(This is not to say that I don't believe there are certain rescue sanctuaries which truly do help wolves, though even then those places only need to exist due to human destruction of natural ecosystems and wide-spread wolf slaughter in the past century by the uninformed, uneducated, and greedy.)

So if the nature of wolves can't be best determined by their survival within captivity, what is there to say about the nature of humans within the captivity of, say, capitalism?

 In the words of Emma Goldman—

“Poor human nature, what horrible crimes have been committed in thy name! Every fool, from king to policeman, from the flatheaded parson to the visionless dabbler in science, presumes to speak authoritatively of human nature. The greater the mental charlatan, the more definite his insistence on the wickedness and weaknesses of human nature. Yet, how can any one speak of it today, with every soul in a prison, with every heart fettered, wounded, and maimed?

John Burroughs has stated that experimental study of animals in captivity is absolutely useless. Their character, their habits, their appetites undergo a complete transformation when torn from their soil in field and forest. With human nature caged in a narrow space, whipped daily into submission, how can we speak of its potentialities?”

Think about the world of Hunger Games as brought to us by Suzanne Collins:
While the various districts are made to focus on and root for their hero/celebrities in fights against one another, the actual antagonistic force was the oppressive Capital, facilitating, encouraging, and enforcing this struggle as a way to maintain a status quo of control. The very idea of challenging them was so far out of thought, because people were too busy fighting eachother, starving, and simply trying to make their way from one day to the next.

Or in Star Wars' own Clone Wars:
The Republic and the Separatists were so busy destroying one another that they let themselves be ripped apart from within, betraying any ideals they had once held dear and fought for in order to unwittingly bolster their mutually assured destruction and introduce a singular figure of oppression once it was too late to reconcile.

Or whenever we as people are so caught up in fighting over borders, parties, sects, or resources that we ignore the root causes of this scarcity, which is used by those in power to maintain the illusion of their own usefulness and necessity.

So to recap:

1) Don't let the list of things you think you need to be successful stop you from even beginning to try.

2) Instead of seeing your limitations as weaknesses, accept them as part of your unique self and thus unlock the chance to sow creative expression from the uniqueness of your particular challenges.

3) And remember that the outward enforcement of limitations by those in power need not be the sole means of structuring reality for yourself, your interactions, your community, and your world.

As long as there are boxes for people, there are people climbing out, climbing in, and running around inside and out. All those people are unique and all those people are capable of more than simply being defined by their relationship to their box.

Thanks for reading,
Odist

44/52 - Moment by Moments

“Every creator painfully experiences the chasm between his inner vision and its ultimate expression … We all have the conviction, perhaps illusory, that we have much more to say than appears on the paper.” 

- Isaac Bashevis Singer

Dear Internauts, 

Thus we see the beginning of National Novel Writing Month 2017, or NaNoWriMo—a congested cataclysm of creativity, community, and complexes in which a gazillion would-be novelists set forth to write 50,000 words of a first draft in the limited space colloquially known as November. I've participated several times in the past, only ever completing the challenge, or "winning", once. Usually I'll get pretty deep into the month on good ground, than flail about a bit before falling irreparably behind in the last third and losing track of my sense and motivation before the end comes along to harmonize with my seasonal affective disorder. As if writers aren't neurotic enough, though I suppose for some the challenge can be more inspiring than haunting. 

This year, I'm simply continuing the work of writing out the whole plot for my graphic novel. I started with something of a chronological timeline of important events that take place in the main setting. From there it's a matter of setting up the chapters both as functions of the whole and as miniature plot-lines in themselves, with rising and falling action, climax of sorts, and a hook to leave off before the next chapter begins. 

I've been particularly focusing on a method of story-telling I think I may have heard from a clip of a speech Trey and Matt Parker gave once. It's meant to keep the action moving along by having the connecting fiber between each beat focused on either "but then" or "thus then", instead of "and then". The issue being that "and then" tends to place one action after another in a way far too episodic to maintain forward momentum. This happened "but then" this happened, however, allows for both an obvious continuation from one beat to the next as well as a challenge to continually subvert expectations and keep the protagonist(s) active participants and drivers of the story. "Thus then" works as a way to fit those points which expand upon the previous, the difference between "thus then" and "and then" being what flows naturally and what is simply trying to keep going from one plot point to the next simply out of necessity to hit those moments. 

(Here's a video saying that much better than I can.)

Moments alone, however, don't make a cohesive or purposefully driven plot. 

Although we do often remember specific scenes, set-pieces, or lines from a work, it's the characters and their motivations from one beat to the next which allow us to feel as if we are not simply observers but emotional participants in their lives. Though in some of my favorite genres and plot structures, the focus may seem to be more on the cool or the wondrous or the awe-inspiring or the fascinating, the most affecting of any story-based works of art find a way to connect to our shared humanity. And what better way to do so than by getting us to care about the characters? They don't even have to be the "good guy". 

As I explore my own colorful cadre of maddening miscreants, I tend to find that the best use of moments is one in which even the most absurd can be connected to through a link with these people. 

Speaking of, as I mentioned last week, I finished reading John Green's Turtles All the Way Down recently, and wow. I wouldn't go so far to say that Aza Holmes is this generations Holden Caufield, but I will say that I haven't felt so connected to a protagonist's inner thought life since Catcher in the Rye. So that's my endorsement. 

Speaking of endorsements, here's a little thought: 

One of the many problems with the idea that commercialization should simply be accepted as a necessary function of media is that it completely denies an audience’s intellectual ability to judge the worth of supporting a work while simultaneously forcing an increasing amount of often unrelated garbage down our throats. Thus they can no longer support the work simply because they find it worth supporting, but rather the work is financially bolstered up by the same vile mechanism which distracts from, demeans, and infringes upon the independence of the work’s message. 

You’ve got a possible masterpiece, but who’s to know when it’s the size of a postal stamp and the frame is an arena-sized billboard of blindingly obnoxious industrial space waste? 

I get that everyone’s gotta make a living, but if the art which inherently expresses a part of humanity unable to be fully locked down by the demons of capitalism is enshrouded by its flags and propaganda, even the most sincere attempts at chain-breaking are made flimsy and pathetic. Maybe it’s simply the sad reality of trying to survive in a money-mad, material world. Still, I’d like to believe that there must be some way for the method to match the means. 

Let us NOT all be made hypocrites by our daily necessities. 

At the same time, I was watching 60 Minutes with my mom the other night and boy, are TV commercials weird or what? I'd nearly forgotten how cringey they are. And you can't even skip them after five seconds. Sure, I grew up with that, so maybe I'm jaded. Still, have they gotten more desperate now that so many get their media from non-cable sources. Even the ones on the radio don't seem as bad as the commercials on TV, but maybe it was just the hour I caught, being speckled as it was with political ads too. 

So anyway, (one of) my problem(s) with being a writer who's so often been inspired by current events and social justice issues is how it's all just so overwhelming. 

On one hand, I am on a semi-constant emotional roller coaster ride of madness by being even kinda woke to the contemporary absurdities. On the other, I'm not sure that raising awareness is good enough anymore. I don't want to blog or draw or sing about some bad thing in the same way that I'd just retweet it. 

I don't want to contribute to call-out culture as some simple, brainless conduit for sharing the  24 hour bad news cycle. 

It's too easy to say that other folks have said it better. And it's not enough to simply pass along the latest crisis, scandal, or disaster porn. It overwhelms me, and—despite my many issues—I'm technically an adult in the latter half of my twenties. I do worry about the affect that an atmosphere of negativity has on younger folks. Similarly, I know that there was plenty of stuff I was kept away from as a kid because it was part of the evil/sinful world and deemed inappropriate for me to even know about, much less learn how to process healthily. We can't shelter the future of humanity from everything, but we also can't just pretend that they're somehow automatically immune to the torrential downpour of EVERYTHING that is an integral part of the information age. 

Truly, though, I do believe that this group of kids and teens coming up is poised for some brilliance, so long as we can do our part to help and not hinder their growth into the harbingers of a better age. 

What do you think?

Thanks for reading,

Odist

43/52 - Pain and Perspective

"Whoever declares that the capitalist mode of production, the “iron laws” of present-day bourgeois society, are inviolable, and yet at the same time would like to abolish their unpleasant but necessary consequences, has no other resource but to deliver moral sermons to the capitalists, moral sermons whose emotional effects immediately evaporate under the influence of private interests and, if necessary, of competition." - Friedich Engels

Dear Internauts, 

I've been reading John Green's new book, Turtles All the Way Down, recently, and, while I could quote some brilliance from almost every page, I'll need a few more reads till the best bits settle in. Combine that with the gorgeous film Loving Vincent, which I saw the other day, and my mind is swirling all the more with such a tremendous tide of these inspired thoughts. 

One from Green's book which stands out at the moment is something about how sickness is so often talked about only in the past tense, or rather as something to soon be in the past tense. Pain and illness is that which we're getting over or getting past or on our way out of. However it is, he says it better than I can, but I'm too exhausted at the moment to try and seek out the exact quote. 

And there's another one, of course—how we have so many words for everything but pain resists an accurate description. One of its many victims is language. 

And it's not like I don't know what it's like to try and help out a friend who's suffering. It's not like I don't understand how difficult it can be to try and help out someone you love when they're done and out. It's not like I can really blame the folks who've skipped out and ghosted on me for wanting out. My options for answering any "how are you" continue to be either lie or tell some depressing, barely accurate half-truth. 

Anyways, I've been having a lot of trouble focusing lately. 

Still, I've been thinking a lot about the quote at the top and how it applies to so much I find unsettling. I can dissect that which bugs me the most in society, preach reform and a moral drive within the confines of modern times. Ultimately, though, some things can't be fixed. 

My own inner struggle may hinder my ability to create, as—despite what we've been told—mental illness is more of a hindrance than a help when it comes to art, and yet I'm not blind or unaffected by the astounding injustice in the wider world outside my own mind. Well I strive to find some inner balance and write about a need for empathy and communal cooperation, I can't help but recognize that we can't simply talk the world into a better way. No blog or song will save us all. My personal critiques of politics, religion, or the media are merely the puppy scratches at the door of a bigger conversation. 

The truth is that as long as we live and converse as if systematic injustice is inevitable and unchangeable, all of our squabbles about trying to find a better way of coping within those systems will continue to bounce back against us in vain. While a shift in perspective is necessary, for real change to occur, it isn't enough to look at the world differently. The object itself must be disassembled. 

It's not enough that we try and be more commercially just within an unjust economic structure. It's not enough that we try and be more interpersonally just within an unjust social structure. It's not enough that we try and be more compromising within a corrupt political system. It's not enough that we agree that things are bad for any chance of good to occur. 

Tear the roots out. 

There need be no compromise of love and justice while seeking revolutionary change. In fact, a revolution without love and justice isn't very revolutionary after all, is it? 

If upon hearing of some scandal or abuse, I simply say, oh that's too bad, yet I refuse to look inside and question my presuppositions, then I only allow for the continued existence of an environment conducive to similar wrongdoing. If I complain and jeer at some monstrous act or words from a public figure but refuse to consider the larger context by which they were allowed to come into power, the soil in which they were grown, then I might as well have not spoken at all. 

If all I can say is that at least I'm not like those other folks in my demographic to make myself feel better, than I might as well be cheering on the worst of my kind. 

For now, I don't really know how to be better, only that it's not enough.

Thanks for reading, 

Odist

42/52 - Root Canal for the Brain

Dear Internauts,

I kinda miss having a therapist.

I'll admit I've often used this weekly blogging thing as a platform for pseudo-therapy. While there's not necessarily anything wrong with that, it is too much of a one way conversation, a bit like prayer in that sense. Or at least what my prayer life was once like.

No offense.

Oh, I cherish our time together, sure, even if this is the closest current equivalent I have to homework in my quasi-adult existential squall. Thus today's late posting is more reflective of my last semester of school than it is like the homework of most of my academic life. Please take solace in that you are not anything at all like algebra 2 homework.

Also, please take note that my mood and manner are maybe a bit marred by my mouth's most recent malady (but more on that in a minute).

I've had many therapists in my life. All in and after my feint toward higher education. Some talked far too much, leaning more toward life lecturer than listener. One wouldn't talk at all, even after I'd made every attempt to elicit a reaction beyond the nodding and indiscernible expressions. But all for the better, I suppose. Some when they start talking get a tad too mystical for my liking.

What you need is someone who doesn't force you to talk about what they think the issue really is while still being able to help you deal with what the issue really is.

Also, unlike every single therapist I tried to get in touch with on my insurance plan during the first half of this year, it helps if they don't have a waiting list of three to six months for the first appointment. I wonder if, after that first appointment, my place on the waiting list for our next meeting is decided by how well it went. Would it be an audition?

Between every therapist, social worker, doctor, nurse, intern, old friend, family member, or whoever else I've wound up relaying my mental issues to, the tale has gotten a bit stale in the telling. Along some stories which can grow in splendor at every recounting, tales of illness tend to flatten out, broken down by necessity into their barest facets. There's an effort to appear the opposite of embellishing, to circumvent any attempt by the listener to diminish my pain through disbelief or comparison. Combine that with the need to share a list of symptoms in the same breath as prescriptions for the hundredth or so form, and one might start to think depression is just a cerebral tooth ache.

In a way, trauma is similar to a root canal, and not just in how one tends to exacerbate the other. Consider— a stranger in a position of authority put me in a vulnerable state and cut away at my nerves with a loud, metal tool.  It recalled both issues from my childhood as well as interrelated circumstances from adolescence and the insecurities of self-care as a young adult. If I'd been more prepared to deal with it, the situation would likely not have occurred at all, and yet there remains an inescapable feeling of helplessness and inevitability. (I do believe, if half-heartedly, that some inevitability is at least in part, escapable.)

Of the many differences, of course, one pertinent is that the dentist cut away the nerves from within the infected tooth, so now the intense nerve pain which had existed is eradicated. (Why do we even have nerves in our teeth, anyway?)

Maybe, this is then a better metaphor for how traumatic it is to deal with trauma after the fact? Every trauma builds upon itself. To construct, or at least to fix, we must first destroy.

You can't build on a busted foundation. And boy is the drilling like a jack-hammer!

I've currently got some temporary cement in there with the plan for something more permanent in early November. My jaw still gets sore, so I have to keep up with the pain meds. My teeth feel uneven, despite the sanding and shaping they did to try and find a balance. But then I tend to grind them anyway. Nervous habit.

Fitting, I suppose, that one of my first experiences as a 27 year old is to deal with something that's built up over so many of those years.

We can do everything right. Brush, floss, rinse with whatever brand they're hocking at the time. The tech's gotten better, as has the environment and the medicine, I guess. Still, something can get in there and infect and no matter how hard you try and deal with it on your own, a professional may be needed. Of course, that professional may be a jerk (like so many can be) or they may be kind as sunshine. Still, sometimes they've gotta go in there and dig at all the nerves and the pain and dirt and uncertainty. At the end of the day, it's your mouth.

Sometimes we can't live with the pain. Sometimes even the best fix can't make things even up quite right ever again.

But if I eat a lot of junk food and never brush, the trauma of a little chip in my tooth could turn into a root canal situation all too soon. As far as metaphors go, that's a pretty poor one to say that our brains need regular cleaning too. As with all metaphors, it falls apart upon close inspection.

Still, sorry for the preachiness. Just know I hope you can find a way scrub out some of the junk from your neural pathways. At very least, please know I'm not gonna judge you for taking whatever sort of ibuprofen you need for that sore jaw you can't help but grind.

Thanks for reading,
Odist

41/52 - Another Year and Some (Non)sense

"Sometimes I lie awake at night and I ask, 'Is life a multiple choice test or is it a true or false test?' Then a voice comes to me and says, 'We hate to tell you this but life is a thousand-word essay.'" - Charles Schulz

Dear Internauts,

Another year riding around the sun, and I feel much the same as I did last time.

I've decided to spend the rest of the month working on finishing a timeline for the events of my graphic novel, Ghosts of Domus. Instead of putting out one completed (written, drawn, colored, and lettered) chapter at a time, I aim to make sure the story is a more complete whole first. This way, I can spend NaNoWriMo (National Novel Writing Month, a.k.a. November) writing the script out for the entire story. If you're curious, I use the comic book script format of the free software Celtx for my scripts. I picked it up for a screenwriting class back in college and find that it's fairly simple to use and intuitive (even if my own typing can sometimes be a bit quick jumping from section to section).

Here's a picture of a wolf pup I drew after finding an old black marker in my backpack:

I recently saw Blade Runner 2049 and Marshall, both of which I'd highly recommend.

My mom's parents, in moving out of their house in NJ, gave me an old banjo. I don't know much about the instrument, so I picked up a book about it from the library. It's interesting at least, but the physical state of the instrument itself is something I want to get checked out by someone more knowledgeable before I go too hard with it. The tuning of the strings is very tight in the way that feels like if I mess with it too much something is gonna snap. Who knows when last it was played. Still, it's kinda fascinating as some aspects (the open G tuning for instance) seem so straightforward, while so many other aspects of a Banjo are so idiosyncratic (like the high g string at the top, tuned from about halfway along the neck). Maybe if I can figure some of this out you'll get to hear some super simple beginner banjo parts on future tracks.

Been having some tooth trouble. My experiences with dentists as a kid were abominable. Seemed like no matter what I did, it was always wrong. Between that and some rude dentists whose method of joking around was making fun of me, the already anxiety-producing idea of a strange, masked figure with sharp, spinning instruments of torture digging around my mouth is not something I look forward to. I've been trying to avoid it for a long time, and not just because without dental insurance it was cost prohibitive.

If something is tied to negative emotions early on in life, it only becomes more difficult to mentally force one self to deal with them later. Sometimes we think that's not the case because of fears or issues we've overcome, but overcoming them has tied them to a positive step in our mental development. Thus, I can ride escalators like anybody these days, because my negative feelings are counteracted by the positive experience of having done so without issue in the past. However, if there is a continual negative experience, it can be ridiculously hard to justify going back to the source of pain. And then of course, there's traumatic shifts in experience which can take once positive situations or locations and turn them grim and fearful.

Trauma, after all, reshapes brain physiology.

I've heard it said that birth must be one of the most traumatic experiences of life. Makes me wonder what my brain was like before I was born. Probably not too interesting, though. If nothing else, the troubled brain is far more fascinating. Not that I believe in tabula rasa or whatever.

Anyway, that's all I've got for tonight. (yes, there are a bazillion things I could say about current events and politics, but honestly I don't think I've anything of worth to add to the conversation. If you haven't yet, I would suggest checking out Amy Siskind's weekly list for a rundown of this mad, mad world's goings on...or at least the local politics version)

Thanks for reading,
Odist

40/52 - What Writing May Come

Dear Internauts,

In preparation for a yard sale my folks were having, I'd been digging through old plastic crates for anything remotely sale-worthy when I ran into the stacks of notebooks from my younger days. Consisting mostly of writing I'd produced between sixth grade to my college years, these were often pages first accrued for the sake of schoolwork and homework, which instead of doing I'd more often set aside for the sake of scribbling whatever rambling thoughts my troubled adolescent mind might conjure. Often in the format of a song, or barring that the line-by-line rhythmic function of a Whitman-esque fraud, I would not simply fill these pages but, upon inking both sides of every sheet, go back and turn them ninety degrees before disgorging another layer of black or blue ink over-top the previous. What I could manage to read sans nausea I found to be the struggle of a young mind to come to terms with the social, religious, and academic pressures of twenty-first century western teenage life. Most of it tedious, repetitive, and beyond banal, I would collapse from cringing were it not for the pathetic and sympathetic sense of loss found in this hyper-emotional half-being floating chaotically in a nonsense world.

What struck me, besides the sheer absurdity of this young fool's quantity of expression—what may be called prolific if any of it were even somewhat nuanced, original, or of interesting quality—was how freely it all flowed. There was no waiting for inspiration to strike. Panic was all the inspiration needed as the weight of this kid's young world wrung out verse like a washcloth in the path of a collapsed dam. Compulsion to create served as such a strong opposing force to the necessity of any other aspect of life that I sometimes found little, boxed-off sections saved for class notes hidden within the larger deluge of literary excrement and the occasional short segment of comic doodling. The largely unintelligible mass of thought splatter existed so blatantly outside the realm of critique, self-edit, or second guessing. It had to exist. I would puff up and likely explode if not for regularly inky bleedings.

The point of this all is the contrast with my current self-doubt when it comes to creativity. While I still experience the occasional sudden deluge of written obsession, I have now built up so many gates and intellectual stop-gaps between the flicker of inspiration and the expression of thought that in contrast to my previous production, it wouldn't be too far off to say I don't create much of anything at all. Any thought of creation is bombarded by doubts, fears, and criticism before it has any time or space to breathe. No tiny bacterium or figment has much begun to spin into itself before it must come up against the enormous challenge of that which is "good enough" or "worthwhile" or "presentable". Any potential poetic endeavor is a potential song and therefore a potential contender for the greatest or more likely the worst song I or anyone has ever written. This could be the hit, the one they all stand and applaud for, the one that I'll hear on the radio one day, the one that'll make all my former friends and lovers stop and wish they'd treated me better as I raise an award over my head and thank my parents for believing in me. Or at very least it might be a nice step in "the right direction" for me as a songwriter.

Whether it be poetry or prose, I'd much rather be writing fiction than whatever something like this blog is. And the truth is that every final draft is more often than not preceded by multiple less-than-final drafts. We must allow ourselves to create horrible first drafts, says every other writing article online.

Anyway, didn't Harrison Ford not start acting till he was in his 30s? Didn't Vincent Van Gogh not start painting till he has 26 or so? How many times was JK Rowling or Oprah rejected before someone saw their real genius? How many horrible, never to be seen first drafts sit silent somewhere in the basement of the greats or even just the mediocre masses of professional creators?

For a similar reason to why I've spent the past few nights unable to sleep while also unable to open my eyes from exhaustion, tossing this way and that and screaming internally for dissatisfaction and the stress-induced ache in my jaw, squeezed shut unintentionally till my spit tastes like blood, I now write this week's blog on Tuesday afternoon. Unable to refrain from looking at views from previous weeks, I shiver from the weight of what if. I want to polish a mirror before it's been made, cut a diamond before it's been mined.

The fearful potential for even minor greatness does more to hinder its most basic possibility than the first steps of faulty creation ever could.

Fear, pain, dissatisfaction, uncertainty, and weakness are such universal traits that their expression creates some of the most relatable pieces in existence. However, their experience can also lead to the greatest hindrance of creation.

There is no promise that the boxes of notebooks will lead to a Pulitzer or a Grammy. There is no record deal secretly hidden in practicing your scales or signing up for an open mic. Nobody reaches the top of the mountain in one step, but then nobody reaches the top of the mountain without the first step.

It's messy and wild and gross and confusing and real and paranoid and shaking and struggling to breathe. It's writing a blog about not knowing how to write because at least that's writing something, right?

Oh well. It's something.

Thanks for reading,
Odist

39/52 - Overwhelmed by Tragedy?

"It’s as if you’re a sponge that is completely saturated and has never been wrung out. You can only take so much." -Laura Van Dermoot Lipsky

Dear Internauts,

Sometimes it feels all too overwhelming, the world of wounds and worries so blatant. The news of suffering is catastrophic in its abundance of catastrophe. It's so easy to feel guilty for not doing anything to help, but then immediately feel guilty and stuck with no idea how to help. Nothing ever seems to be enough as our awareness of tragic circumstances grows to the point of over-saturation.

I'm exhausted simply in existence—a result of my own issues—but simply trying to stay aware of current events makes me feel trapped beyond escape. The ways in which I see others helping via donations of time, money, blood, or however else seem always just beyond me. Even if I do give, how can I trust any of the "non-profit" organizations whose business practices seem to be in ever-shifting trustworthiness?

At a certain point, it's not even cynicism, but simply gravity. There's a sense of falling without a net, having painted myself into a corner, trapped behind a fire-hot door in a smoking room, while the weight on my back grows heavier and the hole in my stomach expands exponentially. It's a kind of fatalistic defeatism, ever reinforced by the madness of a 24/7 infinite news feed. Even if I can force myself to turn everything off and hide away, I can't forget that the world is melting, the leaders are lying, the businesses are stealing, and the bombers are bombing.

What do I do with the dark sense of certainty that every new bad thing is "the worst" of that type of bad thing we've ever seen? The availability of news stories and the desire for the news media to present captivating post-titles is certainly at play, but it's also a cyclical expansion of this common theme that everything is getting worse.

Now there's every kind of bias at play. Our fear is a survival tactic, and one way to find a minuscule tidbit of relief from emotional pain is to feel our emotions vindicated by the likes and shares of the fear we post and re-post.  What I'm doing right now is simply sharing my pain in the hopes that maybe you can relate, not necessarily with the hope that you will help me feel any better or change my perspective but only that you might give the equivalent of a digital passing nod. Some semi-conscious sense of togetherness can be found in communal terror. From the over-abundance of emergency powers we give to the military and government leadership in the wake of tragedy, to the sense of perverse wonder we find in watching and thumbs-upping "fail" videos.

In truth, this is one of the most peaceful times in history. We have better medicine, longer life spans, and lower infant mortality than ever before. The abundance of accessible information means the growth of more complex and easily attainable education, as well as the creation and dissemination of human personality and empathy through the arts and social media. The theory behind writing your pen pal is now the entire basis for most of human communication.

Still, sometimes it feels wrong to celebrate such positives in light of all the negative. Do I believe that it's only a matter of a greater percentage of good dispelling the bad?

I spent so much time growing up being told that I had to do good because God told me to. Simultaneously, the bad in the world was unavoidable, indefatigable, and unchangeable because of sin, so we might as well just keep our own souls shiny till the after-life and the kingdom come down.
Of course, many of these same people who preached this played the part of many a philosopher and didn't live as such in their day to days.

I like to believe that even the most self-righteous person might have a twinge of goodness in them deep down, at least enough to help out their fellow human being if forced to face that fellow as a fellow.

And there's the rub. Empathy.

It's what every bigot lacks and what every sad soul needs. It's the thing that keeps morality going whether or not you believe there's a divine Big Brother watching over your shoulder, Naughty or Nice list in hand. It's the fast friends children form before we teach them to be racist, sexist, or classist. It's the most necessary quality in the formation of a healthy relationship between anyone and anyone else.

And it's both what keeps us feeling overwhelmed by all the suffering in the world and allows us to keep caring anyway.

I know what it's like to feel trapped by all this madness, and so I can say it's okay not to share in all my sadness.

When we can help, let's. But never because we think we have to or else. Always because we want to help our fellow being in need.

And as always, it's okay not to know what to do.

Thanks for reading,
Odist

38/52 - Motivation: Pleasure versus Pain

"A person who has been punished is not less inclined to behave in a given way; at best, he learns how to avoid punishment." - B. F. Skinner

Dear Internauts,

Advertisements are like the human business equivalent of a dog peeing somewhere to say, "this space is mine".

How often do we agree or disagree with an idea not because of our knowledge of the facts but because of how the idea makes us feel?

Back in college, a peer once brought up the idea that the central motivation for human behavior is found in the pursuit of pleasure.

At the time I disagreed because of the stock I put into the character of the charitable person, one whose selfless acts derived from a deeply ingrained compulsion toward communal improvement. Obsessively religious at the time, I couldn't imagine a world in which morality did not radiate directly out from the central being of a moral god. In my mind, any good which existed, existed as an inescapable aspect of a universe with a good god at its center. Everything that was served as illustration of the character of the divine. Of course, this completely ignores how we come to terms with the bad stuff in the universe. Often, answers for evil and/or pain group them all under the incomprehensible umbrella of a good god's will, disregarding the importance of the horrid suffering to the human condition in favor of the idea that we are all too small and stupid to get how things really work. Or, I've also heard that any bad is simply what exists on the other side of the good, like the land where the sun doesn't reach. Mufasa says don't go there, but we sneak out anyway in the promise of an elephant graveyard. But since human suffering is apparently inescapable in this life, the best we're told we can do is to push ourselves closer and closer to the center of positive radiation, pulling our legs under the covers away from the prying hands of the carnal boogeyman. In this case, pain and evil is not the fault of the divine but something else, and our falling into it is all on us. If only we had more faith, we wouldn't be suffering so.  My spiritual education at the time taught me that either the experience of the bad is our fault or that it's not really that bad at all if only we could see the truth. Switching between variations on these two themes kept the fault off of the only one with the real power to do anything about it—the deity—in favor of keeping us little people in check. 

There is a search for pleasure to be found in doing what we think we're supposed to do, but the main reason we search for pleasure in life is, to my reckoning, what makes it a secondary goal. Above all else, human motivation is defined by fear.

I'm fully willing to believe that it's not as simple as that, that we're actually pretty complex and whether it be the pursuit of pleasure or the escape from terror, neither comes close to fully encompassing our will. The real issue is that in either case, our will is defined by that which manipulates us into action. Desperately, even.

Hope for reward and fear of punishment are tools for teaching behavior. Despite what we've gladly brought with us from the class structure of our primate ancestors, keeping others weak and afraid is not actually the best way to instill loyalty. Positive reinforcement continues to test better and better and better for teaching desired behavior.

I don't consider this to be a point toward PLEASURE in the V. FEAR debate, but I do think it points to the way we handle the logical reasoning behind our actions. If the only reason I perform an action is because of my fear of a particular punishment, I can be traumatized enough to oblige. However, this isn't a binary. Human beings have this tricky thing where we're constantly questioning ourselves and the way the world works, going along with how we feel at any one point or what seems right in the moment over what we may have learned through pain or reward as a little one.

Today, I'd probably stand more with fear being a base motivator in the big general sense, but I think that can also drive people to seek tiny glimpses of happiness within the yawning void. I think there are a lot of people who only act like they care about one another because they're terrified of the spiritual implications of acting out. I also think that for the rest of us, empathy with another person's situation and feelings is an even greater motivator toward sharing our love.

Maybe the human condition is an ultimately terrifying, lonely, flickering, meager existence.

But within that sliver of time, we can share a bit of our bread, a bit of our light, a bit of our mutual understanding.

Thanks for reading,
Odist