Waltz of the endorphins in C minor

I cant feel anything anymore. My brain is fried, I fear permanently. Vacations hurts, as does my mind, and I'm fixin' to die. Apostrophes fix everythin', right? Apostles fix somethings, true? I never knew what pain feels like, but now I beleive I do. I'm afraid of things and people, often combined. I just want to move to upstate New York and write. The world is much too complex for me try to inhabit it. Sleep is where I prosper. My dreams keep me company in the creases of their royal crevasses. I wonder what Nelson Mandela is thinking right now, or what he thought about in South Africa. Did Thomas Edison ignore reality to become an inventor? There are no real answers and no real questions, but I don't think even real questions would real answers if they existed. I'm beginning to doubt nature and whether its thorny roses and pecan trees and purple gales really inspire or if its really just crap. Guitars all sound out of tune to me. Am I writing this prose for fame or for allowing me to understand me in retrospect. The sands of time have doomed us all, and the quicksands of time enrapture us and the reverse quicksands of life resurrect us and Jesus waves erratically from a train car while he mutters a Shakespeare sonnet to Malcolm X in the afterlife. Maybe by throwing out pop figures I can register an emotional response from the reader, myself. We all know famous people, but they do not know us. We are one to them. Using a single word, 'we' makes us singular once more. Its the damn authority that has put down regular class citizens. The masses are always equal to powerful, often less so. Then is this elf defeating as those with power wish to have power over many? Or do they try to control their subjects by belittling them? But by doing that they belittle their own sense of power? Power is a tricky thing. I beleive that is my problem. With no god to believe in for me, I have lost direction. I cannot lead, not now, not knowingly. But I cannot follow either. Everything that can be followed disappears as soon as I begin to think about it. I hate this font. everything is unsatisfying. Orgasms are a chore. Smiles mean the same as frowns. Neutrals arent much to fuss over either. These words don't mean anything, just another brick in some road leading to infinity. If life is a road then I want out. If death is also a road then fuck me. Im scared of communication. Typing this scares me. I want to be an artist, but its too complex. Both technically, and philosophically. I can only hope that my ears don't betray me, unless they already have.

The Sailor With The Bloodshot Eye

E D
I was once born where I don't belong
C G
And I did believe in what I know is wrong
So I packed up my pants and my fiddle case
And wiped the dirt right off of my face
And yonder and yonder I went by foot
Till my ears and eyes were all filled with soot
I came across a town so torn and ragged and crooked and bent
With my buttons and clothes and hair all unkempt
Hens and spoons and ashes all around the curb
And I came across a briefcase inscribed "do not disturb"
F Dmin A C
As I yelled above what could all this tell with a great galactic sigh
G Eb G B C D A E
"nothing but trouble my son, nothing but grief" answered the Sailor with the Bloodshot eye

More verses to come

As I degenerate to my limbs and organs and tissue and cells and atoms and protons and quarks

For the past weeks or whatever unit of time is long enough I have been feeling like I am dying. Not as in hospital cancer dying, but some looming sense of death. It's like a movie or a book or a song where everything is foreshadowing an end. It's not necessarily somber or depressing foreshadowings all the time, but small things like songs or clouds or hair or walking down a hall give me a smile. I have been feeling continuously tired, with either bouts of little sleep or a lot of sleep, and my skin is very bad recently. I fall asleep in school nearly any opportunity I get, even if I do look like a fool. I can't focus on my schoolwork so I stay up late doing homework. I can't even remember the things I waste time on. Maybe it's winter. Maybe it's me. Maybe it's the end. My computer has been screwing up, I rarely talk to my parents save small talk, I have trouble organizing my thoughts and actions. I used to be smart. I still get A's, but I don't feel like I did. It's not all bad, really. Everything seems very romantic. Like a good movie. Music was once my saving grace but I have so little time for it. And live recordings only act as some sentimental souvenir if I was there. As I listen to songs, I wonder what these songs meant to other people. Maybe this reminds them of a person or a place or a time, and they cry or retreat when they hear it. Maybe they were married to it, or made love to it. Maybe they wrote it. Maybe they killed themselves to it, or were born to it. It's much more accessible than a book or film, and is can be as personal or as communal as one would wish. Movies should be watched together - movie theaters. Books should be read alone - small sized. Music is universal - live performances or playings and headphones and iPods. Songs can be remade - unlike books and much more common than films. Photography and Art? Similar, but the artist's intent is not always honored, unlike a solid, unmalleable recording. Looking at gorgeous canvas paintings from a measly computer screen is no justice.
Can I be saved? By music? By Dylan?

Love and Theft - Bob Dylan

BOB DYLAN - "LOVE AND THEFT"

Bob Dylan released this album on September 11, 2001. But putting any emphasis or suggesting a prophecy based on the date is stupid and uneducated. Clearly it is just a coincidence. LT is a great record by a great artist. The songs on this album show a sort of intense feeling like a disgruntled dog, barking its music through guitar strings. It's not necessarily angry or mad, but expressive. His storytelling is as strong as ever, and His Band is in top shape. The rollicking guitar and bass lines carry the album from the fade-in of that repetitious yet tasty lick of "Tweedle Dee & Tweedle Dum" through that slow-churning guitar in "Sugar Baby". The band's bluesy instruments give LT a quality desired by every artist in making an album. That is, creating this isolated bubble of music with complete artist focus. Clearly there is no other bluesy-country-rock act as popular or as contemporary as Bob Dylan's current creative output. No longer that oft-quoted folk songwriter voice of a generation he was in the 60's, Dylan reinvents himself once again as the band leader of his very own cowboy band. Many believe his previous studio effort "Time Out Of Mind" is the first of a type of trilogy by Dylan continued on by "Love and Theft" and 2006's "Modern Times". It makes sense, as they all take Dylan in a new direction. Dylan is no longer Bob Dylan but his bluesman, crooner, and saloon act counterpart Jack Fate, Jack Frost, or whatever pseudonym you wish to use. It is even more evident in his previously mentioned work "Modern Times" where he performs excellent, faithful renditions of early 20th century classics like "Rollin' and Tumblin'" and "The Levee's Gonna Break", once recorded beautifully by Eric Clapton and Led Zeppelin, respectively. But their versions reflect their uniqueness as a band, much like Zeppelin's other classic blues covers of Willie Dixon's stuff. But Dylan performs and writes new blues classics, possibly even surpassing in authenticity and quality of songs by the likes of Robert Johnson and Willie Dixon. "Lonesome Day Blues" is an example of a simply constructed blues-type song if just read on paper, but the timbre of Dylan's voice and of his band's performance reflect not only the sorrow intended by the blues and clearly shown by much earlier records, but also the anger that accompanies sadness. The thing about these songs is that with Dylan's voice and enunciation and phrasing, no one can come close to singing these songs with the same meaning that he can. I've heard it said that "Dylan's voice is shot, but he damn well can sing". Even Freddy Mercury couldn't come close to Dylan's style of singing. With little harmonica and a lack of true acoustic numbers, this album is more rock sounding then it does blues, but everything else implies blues. The songs put Dylan into this other persona of losing and gaining love which gives way for the title "Love and Theft". It could be about how he loved and it was stolen, a sequence of events. Or it could be separate like love is one topic and theft or loss (blues) is another. But with every story of love comes a story of loss, so both can be true as some songs aren't about love, like Summer Days, a sort of bluesy number as he laments the end of summer but rejoices knowing "a place where there's still somethin' going on". The ordering of the songs on the record work ingeniously. The rocking "Tweedle Dee and Tweedle Dum" is followed by the lamenting and grooving "Mississippi", and follows that pattern pretty well with exception of the little middle bit with the nostalgic fiddle work on "Floater" and the subsequent "High Water" with its eloquent banjo work, a feat hard to execute these days without seeming like a novelty song or campy. I digress; the sweeping melodies in the gorgeous waves of "Moonlight" offer a surprising contrast to the crunching riff and squealing guitar in "Honest With Me". This repeats when the slow but rollicking and tempo-changing "Cry A While" is delicately placed in between "Po' Boy" (whose line "Po' boy where you been?" alone actually makes me sympathetic for this character) and the finale "Sugar Baby" (whose quiet accordion adds an incredible quality to this song). All in all, "Love and Theft" is one of Dylan's finest efforts in recent years and takes a keen ear to appreciate the harmony of Dylan's outstanding backing band and his voice, aged like tart wine from those innocent grapes so drastically grasped by the lure of people from Hibbing to Greenwich Village and across the world in bottles. If anyone reads this, I hope you have gained something from my meandering insight on this particular record.

Thought I'd leave you empty handed, did you? Here's a nice selection of live L&T tracks, with the exception of "Bye and Bye". Sorry 'bout that.

Some of these bootleggers, they make pretty good stuff - "Sugar Baby"

Info - http://www.bobsboots.com/CDs/cd-l80.html
Live recordings - http://rapidshare.de/files/36055412/2001__5_October__Spokane__Love_and_Theft_Live.zip

Thanks to ER for providing the link to the above recording.

Grains of Sand

We don't have any individual influence over anything. Everything that happens is because of masses. And that's the only reason why things happen. Masses put people in charge to make things happen. Or masses let people ruthlessly take over to make things happen. No one can change something by themselves. What may seem like individual change from a single person is really influenced by the masses who form a standard of conformity for which to base the level and type of influence or change. The formation of a language is the prime example, for things that we learn or obey or act on is based on our understanding of a language which creates "biased" words. Everything has a bias. We are only grains of sand in this giant beach, which is polluted with shell casings, paperwork, red paper clips, bleeding branches, breaching bombs. The tide's simply pulling and pushing us every which way, and it moves all together without noticing. The overcast skies pour buckets of salt on the gapes of earth. We all pain together, but we can rebuild together. There is no individual, on the relative individual to society. Is that a bad thing? Perhaps not, because we can never be truly alone. We work together without even knowing. Each man is a civilization, composed of customs and opinions.

The Secret Miracles

Borges' "The Secret Miracle" talks about an artist sentenced to death. Well, a writer, but I see no difference. With his several unfinished plays in mind, he prays to God in his prison cell the night before his execution to have another year for which to perfect his works. As the shooting guards aim, the universe stops except this man's consciousness. Within the subjective year, he perfects and finalizes his play he wished. The Universe then resumed and the execution was carried through.

Though morbid, and I pray I don't portray tones of helpless death, no one has infinite time to which to live. Everyone has a death sentence. And I don't know when mine is scheduled for, and I have unfinished plays to proofread and correct. In the blogosphere is where my universe stops to write. Like the man, I'm not writing for anyone but myself.

This blog, or essays which I prefer to consider them as, will hopefully become a secret miracle. I pray to be able to iterate my thoughts and reactions logically and capable of intelligent response.

I just don't know who to pray to.