I started out with nothing to write about. I just wanted to write. Acting on that urge is a recipe for disaster.

Disaster = Writing a blog post that Eric, my sole reader as near as I can tell, will not be inspired to comment on.

In this sense disaster doesn't seem so bad.

I've been trolling craigslist some, looking for possible band mates. I found this one guy, a drummer. The tone of his writing and the artists he listed told me he would probably be a good guy. We struck up a bit of an email conversation. He listened to my music, and then he didn't write back. I was pretty attached to the idea of working with this guy, so I sent him an email, "My music isn't that bad is it?"

He responded. I really liked his response.

"I happen to think your actual music is catchy. What you're hiding beneath the veneer of irony is something else entirely. I'm not into emo music but I appreciate the emotional honesty, even if it's childish drama. Songs about elevators and why white men don't name their babies Jesus are best left to Beck back in the 90s. Even Beck became vulnerable."

As much of a slap in the face as this was, I loved him for it. I basically did the email version of getting down on my knees and begging to work with him after this post. He was so perceptive...so honest. He never got back to me.

A couple of days later, I got an email from a DJ at Killradio, an internet radio station based out of Los Angeles. We had exchanged a noncommittal "hey wanna do a show? sure!" kind of thing about a month ago. All of a sudden he was confirming a date, in four days! I said okay. Having had bad experiences with solo performances in the past, there was no way in hell I was going to get up on stage with an acoustic guitar and croon for thirty minutes. I was determined to play this gig as a band. I've been "trying" to assemble a band for years, but I've never really had a reason to. In three days I put together a band, we practiced, and tonight we played. There were about six people there and we played great. Tomorrow we might play again at Mr. T's to fill in a cancellation. The great pumpkin works in mysterious ways.

A new lack of sentiment

This is a big story. This story is bigger than an "I am just about to go to bed and want to get this idea down that I had a while ago while I'm thinking of it blog post."

I am sentimental as hell. I always have been. When I was about five-years-old I had a pear of Vans slip-on sneakers. They were the ugly kind, all covered with psychedelic colors and what-not. I wore them until my toes poked through and the soles came off. My parents made me get new shoes, but I refused to allow my ugly worn out shoes to be thrown away. They were deposited in a drawer in my father's closet, and I wouldn't be surprised if he still had them. He is a sentimental bastard just like me.

I had a girlfriend when I was going to city college. I had been madly in love with her since I first saw her in my junior year in high school and just my luck she went to city college after high school. She should have gone to a real college. She was the type. Her immigration status was questionable and she wasn't too well off so I think that's why she went to fuck up college with me. She ended up getting a good job though, because she's that type. I was persistent as hell with her, and eventually she let me take her out, and she let me kiss her, and we went out for about eight months before I realized we had nothing in common. All that devotion and heartache. I would feel stupid about it, but I don't. I would tell you about why I don't, but that's a whole other story and I'm about up to my neck in stories as it is.

One of the things that made our relationship weird was that she always wanted to pay, and she would find a way to do it, too. Once when we were in high school we were together for some reason even though we both knew I didn't have the faintest chance of getting with her and I payed for some food of hers. It was some drive-through crap, I think, and it cost about five dollars. A few days later I looked in my ashtray or my glovebox or something, and there was a little folded up five-dollar bill with "Hi Matt" and a little smiley face written on there in the handwriting that little girls get taught at the top-secret girls camps that they all go to but nobody talks about. I saved that five dollar bill all these years, and yesterday I was going through my old stuff, throwing out crappy songs I wrote in ninth grade, and I found that five dollar bill. I spent it on some hash browns, some orange juice, and a slice of pizza.

frustrated

I barely graduated from high school. I had plenty of brains but I had no intention of doing anything with them and no teacher could make me. Most of my teachers were smart and got out of my way and handed me “D” grades for acing my tests and turning in zero homework assignments, and that was fine by me.

Mrs. Mealliffe was the art teacher. I didn’t care too much about learning to draw or paint, even though I liked to draw and paint. What I liked to do was throw pots on the wheel and she let me do that in the other room while all the other kids drew pictures, or that’s what I have to guess they were doing in there. I didn’t think much of it at the time, but that was a pretty damn smart thing for her to do. Sometimes I just wandered off, seeing as I didn’t have much in the way of supervision, but most days I worked my ass off in there throwing clay. She pretended to be a hard-ass, so I never noticed what a big favor she was doing for me, but then at graduation she came up and gave me a big hug and cried a little bit as she said all that sentimental crap that I never thought her the type to say. I guess maybe she was surprised I had made it out of there.

Mrs. Huffstedler was the English teacher. Her husband had died and so she married his brother. She taught Shakespeare, but I managed to wriggle out of it. She said I was a good writer, but I didn’t believe her. It was just after she had given me a bunch of shit for not doing any work and I thought she was just trying to make herself feel better after laying into me. One day in class she called me out in front of the whole class. “Mr. Kates, do you even care if you graduate?” She said it in a way that wasn’t exactly rhetorical, but it didn’t exactly expect an answer, either. I replied dryly, “It’d be nice.” The tone of my reply, in conjunction with the actual words and the situation in which they were uttered, translates roughly to “You bore me. Fuck off with your silly questions.” Miss Huff, as we called her then, was a good teacher who cared about her students and tried hard.

I had another teacher whose name I can’t remember. I took her history class over the summer, though I can’t remember why. She spoke with an east-Europe accent and she could not have cared less about her students. All she cared about was history and talking about it in a precise way. I got an “A” in that class and I doubt she ever knew my name.

My arch nemesis was Miss Hamre, the band director. I didn’t have to try in band. I was musically gifted and so I did well without trying. I was the leader of the percussion section during my junior and senior years, and I won little plaques for being a good musician. I found one of these plaques this morning in the garage and I threw it out along with a bunch of other old books and credit card statements. Miss Hamre and I butted heads constantly and I routinely quit the band, only to quickly take it up again in the manner of a particularly weak-willed smoker. I had plenty of friends outside of the band, which was rare, especially for a member of my “stature,” and I did my best to ignore the fact that I devoted much of my free time to this activity. I placed much more importance on playing in terrible rock bands and driving around in my black 1966 Impala. I heard a story once, second hand, of a kid at my school who when asked what he thought was the coolest car in school was, he said, “Matt Kates’ Impala. That thing scares me.”

One day I was walking around campus by myself, probably during art class. It was late in the year and it was bright and hot, but not yet summer hot, and there was shade caused by trees and the grounds were quiet. The final bell was approaching and like the calm before the storm the school seemed to pause both in time and space. I ambled past the counselor’s office and the various college posters and with the quiet all around me I decided that I would go to Stanford University. It was too late to apply and I hadn’t even taken the SAT’s but somehow I felt that it wasn’t a ridiculous goal. That very next fall, I began my first semester at Pasadena City College.

My Philosophy teacher at Pasadena was Mr. Richards. He had no doctorate but people called him "doctor" anyway because he was obviously smart enough to deserve the title. I always called him “Mister,” however, because I figured that if he was that smart he would slightly resent the misnomer. Mr. Richards spent very little time discussing Philosophy. He talked about all manner of things and taught his classes a great deal but he was a master of the tangent and his unique view on life made those tangents interesting, to say the least. His tests, unfortunately, adhered strictly to the syllabus. I received a grade of “C” in the first of what would be three classes with Mr. Richards, and he would later change that grade to a “B” – a grade change I did not ask for and, on paper at least, did not deserve.

Mr. Richards had an interesting method of teaching. Basically, he fucked with his students, which is pretty much the best thing you can do with a bunch of snotty 18-year-old kids. As I look back on that first semester with Mr. Richards, I see that I pretty much had it all figured out, and that if I was going to learn anything at all I was going to need my foundations to be severely shaked. You see, dear reader, it is not only important to have the right beliefs, it is equally important to know why you have them, and in order to know that you have to go through some shit. Mr. Richards started all that. He had me doubting the color of my own eyes and once he got done with me I was fully capable of fucking with my own head, so much so that I was able to do it at the University level and then after that do it freelance. I don’t even know what that means in retrospect from my present situation of clarity. That is how fucked up and backwards I had become.

boop dee boop - i crawl around - CRAWLING - lately i am crawling -

Usually, I don't feel the need to meditate. Lately I have been needing to meditate but not doing it. Tomorrow morning I will be MEDITATING>>>>!!!!!!!!!!!

AREN'T YOU GLAD!?

My friend George sent me this.

1st and foremost, don't be scared, be prepared. Remember that.

I am telling you this because I love you guys. BE PREPARED. It appears the next MAJOR event is imminent. There are missing nukes right now, I'm reading a post about possible chemical attack on us, all bombers and fighters are standing down on Sept 15th I believe, meanwhile Russia has resumed Cold War bombing runs over the North Pole, Israel has warned of an attack, there are no flight to Israel between the 14th and 16 I believe, there has been a record number of put options (these only pay off iff a stock PLUMMETS) that EXPIRE on Sept. 22nd. If the stock market DOES NOT CRASH by Sept. 22nd, this mystery investor loses 1 billion dollars in similar fashion to the record number of put options being placed on United Airlines before Sept. 11th.

We're in crisis mode. Like I said, fear is not the answer and will not help you. Stock up, get water, keep your car full of gas. Be MENTALLY prepared to see some death and more shock and awe. It appears we will probably invade Iran in the next 2 months, more than likely 30 days. They do not care, they are just looking for a reason.

So, scenario time. The live nuclear weapon that they "accidentally" flew from one part of the country to the other went missing. They said there was 5 missiles, then 6, then 5. So, said nuke goes off in a major US metropolous, we immediately launch and all out offensive against Iran, this all triggers the pre-planned collapse of the stock market and the value of our dollar, and all this triggers Martial Law and a total police state within the US. This is End Game.

If you need information and anything talked about here let me know.

GET ON THE HORN. WE ARE IN CRISIS MODE. HOPE THIS IS NOTHING BUT THE STAGE IS SET, THE PAWNS ARE IN PLACE.

SEND THIS TO YOUR FAMILY, LOVED ONES, PEOPLE WHO STILL THIN

lots of stuff

What kind of post should this be?

SUbMiT YOUR VOTE NOW!!!!

everyone is watching to see what the selection will be!

Personally, I'm hoping for a biographical post. I want to know what parts of Matthew's life Matthew deems important. (hint: matthew likes BIKES and PEOPLE that ride BIKES)


ALSO - FACT! - matthew performed an experiment in FEAR today. (he was drunk!)

HE was riding his bicycle through highland park and he thought:

I would like to call Rachel to see if I can get high and maybe explore some previous sexual tension.

And then he realized - Now! I understand why Cohry had that weird intuition about Liz and Rachel and Myself! - - - ME and RACHEL were hitting it off, and Liz was Jealous! - and she didn't want to admit it to Cohry because she is his HUSBAND!

Really, this is not a subject I should be writing about this. It is too personal!

BUT I LIKE IT!!!

I like to write with a sense of danger and abandon. IT IS PART OF WHAT MAKES THIS POST WHAT IT IS>>>>>>>>>>>

crying for pavarotti with my mother - marching in the high school band - flying around like mary poppins at night among the power lines - george cuts my feet to protect me from evil, and he is surprised with the results - i intruduce him to cohry and they talk excitedly about david icke.

flying in dreams for me is a compromise. the reality of the ground around me reminds my brain that reality physics should have some say in things - but the physics of dreams allows me to soar as long as my willpower can hold me there. it ends up something like walking on the moon, except i go much higher and longer than the astronauts did. i gracefully land like mary poppins.

I've said it before, and I'll say it again...

I'm in love with Margaret Yang.

movies are the land where everything ridiculous becomes sensible, and reality becomes slightly inadequate.

Three days in a row I watched the sun rise in three different states.

In Montana I stayed up all night. I paddled a kayak towards the middle of the lake and sat there in the quiet.

It had been a fitful night in a poorly designed Amtrak chair. Somewhere in Oregon I looked out the window and smiled.

In Sacramento I woke up on the floor of the observation car. I took a seat and thought to myself as the third sun rose, "This means something. It means something good."

Some people think that the winter solstice of the year 2012 will be a very special time. Some great shift is to occur then. For mankind and for all existence there will be either a great leap forward outward and upward or an ugly and unfortunate fall from grace. I myself have believed this from time to time. The precise nature of this belief has depended largely on my mood. Sometimes, too, I wonder - What if the great shift has already happened? What if that is the trick? Doomsday is always coming but never comes. Enlightenment is fast approaching yet nowhere to be seen.

I stare at a the clock and it reads the eleventh hour. Outside it is already afternoon.

Eric's Question

"Two things I could tell somebody else how to do, but no way I could do them for myself, are, writing a novel and starting a band."

If you were to tell somehow how to start a rock band, what would you say?

And how to write a novel, what would you tell them?

I was really struck by the above quoted sentence because it seems to me that actually telling someone how to do those things would involve breaking down the large task into a series of small tasks. And that process, it seems, might be a good way to start doing it.

I'm not giving you advice here, just musing about it abstractly.

eric

Well,

I would probably do what you said. I would basically hang around the person all the time and say "You need to do this. Okay good, now do this." Etc. Etc. Etc.

I suppose there is a little lie in that sentence. "...but no way I could do them for myself..."

Right now I think I could do those things for myself. Really, it's not very different than doing it for someone else. It would take a bit of courage and a bit of discipline, but I think I could do it.

I suppose what I was trying to say with that sentence is the following. Starting bands and writing books are long term goals made up of lots of little tiny goals. Therefore they are easy to quit, and easy to corrupt. In "telling someone else" how to do those things I was splitting up responsibility between two egos. There is the one ego that wants the long term goal, and that ego is in charge of telling the other guy what to do. The other guy is in charge of the little tasks. He focuses on them and them only because that is how they must be done. He is much more likely to say "fuck it" if he doesn't feel like completing any one particular goal because he doesn't see it in perspective. If the long term ego tries to complete the short term goals, he will probably fuck them up because he isn't looking at them for what they are in themselves.

It is hard to split yourself up like that, I think. That is the point. Theoretically, it would be a lot easier complete these goals successfully if I had someone telling me what to do, or if I was telling someone else what to do. Division of labor, delegation of responsibility. In reality, however, it probably wouldn't be that much easier, simply because I like to do everything myself and I would never be sure that the other person was doing their job right.

I hope that answers your question. I was glad to write about it, because I wasn't too clear on what I meant by that sentece when I wrote it, and now I think I have a better idea.

I tried writing a piece about my trip to traffic court. I couldn't get it to work. It was about how some white people there, myself excluded, were being really stupid. They were basically shooting themselves in the foot in front of the judge and slowing things down for everybody else. I tried to just tell the story objective-like, but I couldn't finish it. It demanded some kind of conclusion, "and this is why white people are stupid." Unfortunately, I didn't believe my own bullshit. I couldn't follow the angle. The piece was called "white people are stupid" because I thought it sounded kind of funny, but then I went on to give a more or less serious account of some white people being stupid. The specific account, however, just wasn't sufficient to support the generality, and in order for the piece to be successful that support needed to be there. I removed that piece and wrote this instead.