Month: April 2019

i don’t usually succumb to existential fears, cultural angst or societal skeletons-in-the-closet. normally, i’m immune. to me, this immunity was not god-given or instinctual or genetic or any other sort of hocus-pocus. it is, however, i believe, my intuitive nature. (to be clear, intuition — imo and based on a preponderance of evidence sprung from scientific research — is a function of the human system 1 brain’s pattern recognition algorithms.) i have spent years and years suppressing and avoiding and dodging the mob’s angst — in fact, more than just its angst. i’ve systematically avoided all mob-like emotions. if you’re clever, you’ve already worked out where where this “mea culpa” is going. yesterday, i did fall prey to it — badly and deeply. columbine, a byword nowadays for the massacre at columbine high school on april 20th, 1999, crept into my subconcious. i had a horrible 420. shortly after waking up around 7 am i knew i was filled with anxiety. i argued with my partner all day. i begged and pleaded and bargained and nagged and escalated and reset expectations and reset priorities and tried to use buy in and charm and quid-pro-quo and anger and impatience and every coping mechanism i have in my toolkit for coping with emotional issues — but nothing worked. nothing worked, i expect, because i completely misunderstood the anxiety. that is, until around 8 pm when i had a bit of a revelation. the revelation came after i gave in for the first time in almost a year and used a bottle of wine as my last resort. we had watched observe and report — in fact i had watched it twice — during the day. then the climax song (where is my mind, by the pixies) led me to fight club. halfway through fight club something violent triggered in my head: i wanted to watch gus van sant’s elephant. 420 is many things. what a fucked up day in american (and world) history. it was hitler’s birthday (curse that name). it was the anniversary of waco. it was the anniversary of the oklahoma federal building bombing. it was the anniversary of columbine. it is the day the stoner’s claimed as their stoner holiday. ugh. that shit crept in during the week. watching the opening scene of elephant, i realized that it was clearly monaco and 33rd street in denver, a corner i know well. ugh. it all came crashing down. i have ptsd about 420 and didn’t even know it. denver has been buzzing about the 20th anniversary of columbine all week. my work was even on lockdown on thursday because some crazy bitch made threats. obviously the schools went on lockdown because the authorities had completely failed to prevent columbine — well, i don’t blame them necessarily because unknowns are … unknown — at least until they are known. so they … couldn’t have known. sounds like a tautology. anyway. the ghost in my shell is now revealed to my conscious mind. i can begin my long-term emotional deconstruction on the angst. i choose not to carry around the emotional baggage. it was a horrible day for many people, i suspect. curse the gun owners. curse the gun violence. curse the culture of guns and wars and slaughter. curse the macho, male micro-aggressions. curse the angst. curse the terrorism. may it remind us to be stronger, better, more resilient. may we be oak in the wind storm. may we be mountains in the hurricane. look at me using sympathetic magic in a blog post.

songs. forms. 4 to 15 minutes. thematically unified across harmony, melody, rhythm, tone, timbre, prosody, lyrics, instruments. patterns were packaged and reusable. simple. sections. looping. repeating. effects. mathematics applied to digital representations of the physical properties of sound. unreal and impossible. feedback. rituals. dogma. disassociation. discorporation. colors. floods. overwhelming. emotions. feelings. expressions. catharsis. social unity. social chaos. solitude. broken. ashes. reformed. reborn.

john c maxwell. yikes. the 5 levels of leadership. yikes. this guy was a preacher. a pastor. he likes football. a lot. all his heroes are villains of the #metoo movement. heaven forbid you are not a white, straight male while putting these pieces of good old boy, peter pan advice into practice. these nuggets will get you lynched if you don’t pass the test.

i had a bad dream. i was in an airport security line. there was some sort of altercation across on the other side of the room. i couldn’t see what it was but the security officers drew guns and starting firing towards the opposite wall. the frightened crowd began diving for cover. we all hit the ground but the gunfire just kept coming. they were firing at some sort of monster that was fast and was going to point to point. it must have jumped over my head. the officers were so terrified that they were no longer concerned with civilian casualties. they were firing blindly, indifferent to innocents. as the beast leapt over my head, a shot ricocheted against the wall. my hands covering my head, my forehead touching the ground, my last conscious thought was that i’d been struck with a bullet in the neck. a few seconds later and i was dead. then i woke up. now i can’t get back to sleep. bugger.