It’s May

Ok it is May and I haven’t written a post in a month.  That is ok by me though because I have turned over a new leaf. HAHAHAHA. No I haven’t.  I’m still the same old trudger.  Still trying to find out what the hell I did to ensure that I never succeed the way I wanted to.  The good news is I am getting an A in my class so far.  Some more good news is that I am performing tonight. It is just a small skit, but I thought of it, I wrote it, and I am doing it.  This does feel good. I must say.  The only thing that saddens me is that I know it will end soon.  My last class is Thursday, and after that I have a “summer off”.  Ok, it means I have work still but no other prospects.  I hope that without school I can do more performing, but knowing me, I will cower and cry instead…

I am incredibly anxious today for some reason however.  I don’t know if it’s the practically 8 pints of coffee that I’ve shoved down my gullet, or the jimmies from nervousness about my performance.  Either way - it’s not feeling so hot.  My shoulders are incredibly tensed.  Ok now this blog is turning into a complaint board in the style of a rickity old lady. But if that’s what I’ve become then so be it.

I am ready to fully embrace my new rickity-old-lady persona and dedicate this blog to complaints that only consist of: Weather, Aches, Expensive Prescriptions.

Inspiration Nation

It is hard to be inspired to write on this blog.  It’s not breaking any barriers or bringing grown men to tears.  Neither is it healing broken hearts and stimulating stagnant minds.  It’s not that I want men to cry after they read my blog really, but I’ll take it.  It’d be cool to see a tough frat guy collapse in a heap and tremble with adoration.  Ok, this is becoming creepy.  I don’t want to act like Jesus.  It’s just that I never know if I’ll ever be able to touch the lives of others.  I don’t really want to change their lives or make them abandon their homes to live in a commune and drink purple kool-aid while doing exercises.  Basically, there is some sort of need for the exchange that comes with artist and spectator. Could it be validation?  Could it be the need for endless attention that comes with exceedingly low self-esteem and disgust with one’s face and every mirror in their house is broken from smashing it drunkenly while calling themself failure over and over again?  Sure.  Those could both be it.

Point is man is that there is a need for art like the need for food - I’m burning with the need and my nerve filled stomach is always on the brink of eruption. 

The feeling of being touched by someone’s art is always fleeting (even with music sometimes we tire of a tune we once died for), but I have faith that even though the initial jolt passes, it forever becomes part of someone’s (short) life experience.  I just want to be able to touch someone positively in that way.

Back to Smack

No I am not doing heroin.  But that would probably be nice right now.  I have never tried it, but i’m sure even it’s withdrawl beats this sick mess I’m in.  I have a bang up job of a body and a beat up engine of a brain. And apparently car metaphors have now become my literary tool.

Not sure if this is called a coincidence or if it is just the fact that sociology DOES make you think about your own position in life, but, the material i have been reading lately is like the story of my development.  Of course I was brought up in a micro-version of capitalist development.  My parents both extremely poor at the onset of my conception, but their extremely diligent work ethic along with astounding intelligence allowed them both to succeed and eventually provide us with a very comfortable life.  My father was an incredibly talented painter as a young man.  I have seen these paintings, and have shed tears upon seeing their beauty.  He didn’t want pursue this however, which is fine.  He wanted to work with money, but still to this day I wonder if he really wanted to be a painter. If you work your ass off according to the rules, you get by the world.  It is a common theme I have pondered throughout my adult life.  Would I have been happier in a small society, a tribal setting?  Of course this is ludicrous to ponder on some levels because if I was in a tribe, chances are I wouldn’t crave a western upbringing if it didn’t really hold much meaning to me.  I suppose what I am trying to say is that, by the time I am on my third book for the class I am taking, we will be studying Emile Durkheim’s Suicide a direct result of capitalism on many people.  I have gone through the early analytical works about Capitalism and am soon to reach the study where we see the people of capitalist nations off themselves because of how insane the society has made them.

I must admit that I am among this crowd of unhappy capitalists.  I am unhappy in this society.  I am unhappy that because the failings of my mental health have resulted in complete inability to succeed the way I wanted to.  That I must walk the walk in order to even live comfortably, ie. If I studied banking (I have the smarts for it), I could have a nice 2 bedroom apartment on the Upper West Side.  That I must forego my art because I couldn’t navigate my way into the elite art world where you actually get paid for it (A very small exclusive world).  Instead I mosey along, unaccomplished, heartbroken, and feeling wasteful of my talents.  Instead of living my dream, I live in pergatory.  My father’s talent for painting (he also has a talent for languages) makes me wish that he’d pursued a more artistic way of life.  But then I remember, that he didn’t have the same anguish attached to his art, he didn’t feel the need for his art to touch people, or to mean more than just a picture in a sketch book, not a way to live.  For him art was just a thing he did, but it certainly could never give him money for his childrens’ college education. 

Here a poem:

I am a Yankee
Born bold and ready to be

More than something underneath a stone -
But only enough to carry some genetic features

Locked away among the dust of the family paintings
I look through the window of the attic at the maples

Through foggy scratched glass with dead gnats and webs in corners.
The view is all I get.

Playing

I am supposed to be an adult.  In the past few years I have definitely felt like I am one.  Especially what happens to me automatically - being thrust into adulthood. This involves: Needing to work to live, needing to date to find a mate, needing to mature in order to deal with those two things .  I have a job, I have a mate, but I am far far from “mature”.  Are adults really “mature” anyway? I don’t think you really are until you’re about 75 or so.  Everyone has their own definition of what maturity means for them. Compared to the rest of society? Compared to older people? Compared to your parents? Who the fuck knows. All I know is that I really do not feel able to tackle any of these “adult” things.  I can barely take care of myself - just me, on my own. Let alone having responsibilities. As an actor I think I play the part of responsible well and have tricked myself into thinking I know the way to be a responsible person.  But that means all I am doing is playing (with my own head really).  I don’t do it on purpose.  I just feel as though deep down I have no fucking clue how to be grown up. But again, maybe most do not.

A Semblance of Ease

I don’t know what it is, but returning to a structured institution of erudition has slightly calmed the raging chaos in my brain.  I cannot really explain it too well, now, because at the moment I must let it happen rather than my usual frenetic analysis (all too often ruining any of the sprinklings of joy that managed to accumulate in the first place).

 I shall elaborate a tad.  Just looking back at the four-plus hours I dedicated this weekend to acute study impressed me.  Rarely do I have any feeling of confidence due to any actions.  More often than not, all of my actions put me to shame, and make me sink more and more into feelings of inadequecy.  Instead, I am excited about re-entering my studies tonight, four days before my class and already feeling I could practically write an opus on the material we were given!  I dug in with such care and attempt at mastery (needing to succeed is now my primary goal). 

The shock at my diligence, and the afterglow of this, is still with me today.  I am at my dull, thankless job, giggling inside because I feel as though I have a secret.  I feel now that there is a chance I can overcome this lackluster plateau I set myself in and instead live in a world that I designed for myself a little more.

Head Wars

I am officially broken and bruised.  My brain has perhaps ceased to function in any way that resembles any leap towards happiness or healthy calm.  I want to go away but I can’t. I want to go to the Australian outback but I can’t.

I want to be back with my love the same way it once was, but I fear I cannot.  My bones are aching so much.  My head feels like it has been through a war.

I cannot handle how I feel anymore, so maybe it’s best that that part of me ends as well. The feeling is too much.  The pain is so much. I am even sick of writing and thinking like this - this painful way of complaining to myself. It is the only thing I can do. It’s almost become all I am able to do well. Be sad. I am sure good at being sad.

Missing the Void

I have heard that the non-fiction work Touching the Void, by Joe Simpson,  is an excellent read.  It is about two men just barely surviving disaster on a 21,000 ft peak in the Andes.  I skimmed part of it on Google Books this morning, and I don’t know why.  My Grandfather was a huge mountaineer, LOVED climbing snowy peaks and has probably a total of 500 or so books on the subject, including Touching the Void along with other Joe Simpson’s sequels. 

I’m sure it popped into my head because of the bitter cold here in NYC today, but maybe also because I am always figuring out how it is that people get to do what they want to do.  Why I am not able to do what I do often at all, and why that is the case. (Redundant sentance, sorry)

In any case, I am severly frustrated by a lot in my life.  I cannot for the life of me figure out how to do what I really want to do.  Intellectually, I understand the “steps”, but I physically and emotionally cannot carry them out.

These two men managed to climb a huge mountain because they wanted to, and even in the face of grave disaster survived and went on to do more.  I don’t even necessarily want to climb a snowy mountain (maybe a small one in Vermont, but that’s probably the farthest I would go).  I want just be able to do what I love which when all is said and done, is art.  Art doesn’t usually give you frost bite but it does cause starvations. I am not saying I don’t do it at all. I just don’t do it enough. And this isn’t in comparison to anyone else.  It is my personal fufillment quotient.

I remember vividly (one quality I posess and enjoy is really good long term memory) being around 15 as a sophmore in high school in Belgium.  I was a bit wild and rebellious, but also very passionate in a positive way.  I didn’t quite posess the nihilism that many teens have (I have the great fortune of having increased angst and nihilism as a grown adult, sigh…).  But I definitely remember being so gung ho about being a actress for very admirable reasons.  A part of me wanted fame - the vain part of me.  But for the most part I whole heartedly desired to deliver quality messages and artistic spledour to the masses.  I planned to dedicate my life to this.  It was DEFINITELY what I was going to do.  The good news, is that I haven’t stopped actually doing theatre.  The bad news is I don’t do it enough to make me happy day to day, and I am sometimes at a loss as to whether the past theatre I have done touched even one person remotely.

It is true that everything we do affects somebody.  It is also true that everything you do affects yourself.  And if you hate what you do instead of theatre, but still do it well, it becomes a hell of a confusing predicament.  (Ok, I don’t hate what I do for a day job, but it is pretty lame, and a waste of my brain)

All in all - a large part of me feels like I’m in a floating void, seeing potential splendour around me but being unable to touch it.  If I can one day get closer to it, I may one day get closer to happiness.  I just want to be able to climb without falling too hard and starving.

Bovarino

So I decided to purchase the Norton Critical Edition of Madame Bovary this weekend.  I chose specifically this edition because the translator is Karl Marx’s daughter.  Interesting considering Flaubert was touching on themes like materialism and Capitalism and the Bourgeoisie. And my favorite - the malcontented bourgeoise dreaming of a life more on the lines of passion, elegance and aristocracy rather than her dull sullen life at the hands of a clingy sub-par doctor.

While I do not read novels in the hopes that some passionate character will leap out of the pages to whisk me away (and Woody Allen actually entered the pages).  I do understand her desire to be wild.

In my times of sobriety I do not feel bored, unsatisfied, or Bovaresque.  But, I must say I miss some of the feelings.  I know this sounds weak, lame, and illusiary.  I will give one example:

Yesterday was an atrocious stormy day. It was snowy, freezing, slushy, rainy, gray, and wet.  After a 4 hour day of shopping my girlfriend and I went to a neighborhood bar/grill and sat down with the snowy football game, soup in hands, and folks with big sweaters seated with tempting ales and irish coffees.  I ordered my O’douls with passivity and staring at my friend’s wine with envy.  It’s not that I NEED NEED NEED booze. I just like it on cold days when I’m worn out, wanting some relaxation and laughter.  Normally my relaxing consists of worry, nervous laughter, and high neurosis. For just a bit I wanted to feel care-free.

 I didn’t read about this in any novels like Emma B.  I just sort of feel it, little ol’ me.

New Blog, Old Broad.

Here I go writing for the lackluster internet void.  As the chapters of my old fairly well read, paid writing job, is now defunct, I decide now to embark on a new chapter of late-twenties musings.  Of course, due to my clinical depression, replete with low self-esteem, I look at the term “late-twenties musings” as cliche and nauseating.  In fact, most of what I write turns into a celebration of intense self-critique.  After my pieces are completed I re-read with a harsh “harumph” and walk away with no sense of accompishment what-so-ever.  I feel as though all I have done is vomit up old adages and commentary with my ersatz post-modernism. (My post-modernism is probably closer to post-past-old-modernism, like art that returns to realism or older forms because everything “edgy” has been done. I’m behind my time, not ahead of it) - But by being behind in my time instead of present or avant does that in FACT make me avant-garde because no one is doing it—?? Lord quell this ADHD.

No, I don’t like to analyze what kind of movement I belong to. I prefer to just keep on keeping on like the geriatric I feel.