The Future History of the Seaside Mining Company

Cybele's Reverie has always been my favorite Stereolab song since I first heard it in '96.  The vocal is in French, and I'd often sing along not really knowing the words.  For some reason I thought it was about philosophy and theorists, probably because I was in art school at the time and had been introduced to some French theory.

Today the old shuffle mode queued it up and so I finally decided to look up the lyrics.  Not only did I find the French but also a translation and I was shocked at how moving they were to me, bringing a tear to my eye.  They expressed thoughts I'd been having lately about my outlook on life in general; what is truly essential about my experience of living.  It's magical when art can do that.  Interesting that I decided to search and find this translation at this particular moment in time when it seems most appropriate.

Cybele's Reverie by Stereolab

Cybele's Reverie

translation:
childhood is very nice
childhood brings magic
What to do when one has done everything?
Read everything, drunk everything, eaten everything?
Given everything in truth and in detail,
when one has cried on all the rooftops,
wept and laughed in the towns and in the country?
childhood is the most real
the garden of new visions
the house, the house, of other times
the house, the house that we have left
and the silence
that penetrates me

It is the third morning since returning home from Catalonia, and when I wake I look out my westward window still expecting to see the sun rise over the Mediterranean.

Last night I attacked my jet lag with 11 hours of sleep.  My dreams were full of anxious efforts to decode unknowable rules and procedures, unable to abandon them.

My bowels ache, there is pressure in my head, slightly dizzy, inability to focus, dehydrated, no appetite.  The last thing I want to do is work but it's the one thing I must do.  I must drop back into my old routine.  My work requires some form of caring about my subject and I cannot muster it.  The part of me that can fake it has taken over.  I lean against the faker like I would a bar—elbows on top, one hand on a glass the other on top of my head to keep it from floating away.

After seeing Europe for the first time the aspects of America that are pale imitations of Europe begin to reveal themselves as such.  A cathedral in San Francisco becomes a simplistic Lego interpretation of the structures that took several lifetimes to build.

It's a degree of reverse-culture shock.  Home seems unreal.  What was normal seems a charade.  I feel like I've seen the real world for the first time.  Like I've lived in a cult all my life and after 10 days outside of it I no longer believe in it, and yet I'm required to live in it again.  For now, at least.  This feeling will fade.  Memories grow dark.  This world that I live in will become familiar again, and the challenge as always will be how to spend my time in a way that brings the real world to me no matter where I am.

Preface: This entry is way too long for any reasonable blog enthusiast to read.  I take comfort and pride in that.

It has been a long time now that I have allowed myself to stay stuck in a self imposed predicament--that of deciding not to write a weblog and yet wanting to write about not writing, then opting not to in order to avoid contradiction.

For nearly 4 years I wrote regularly, often daily, in my two Livejournal weblogs, from late 2002 to mid 2006.  I had free time to spend on writing then.  I was single and had a job that made it easy to do personal work during down time--which was most of the time.  I was coming out of a dark depressing time in my life, moving forward into a creatively prolific one, broadening my interests from visual art to written forms, and using the internet as a creative medium itself.

But life moves in cycles, and it was apparent that I was having a convergence of endings occurring in 2005.  The early 2000s were characterized by enthusiastic social activity which waned by mid-decade.  Friends began to settle down and get married, some moved away.  We were all getting older and had less energy to do the things that twenty-somethings did.  I was feeling increasingly isolated, and in most cases choose to isolate myself in order to reflect on and examine the changes I was going through.  The company I was working for was not doing well (which was apparent since I was able to spend more than half my time on personal writing and socializing on the internet), this came to a head when I was laid-off in September of 2005.  I turned 35 that October.  I had become disillusioned with my interest in self-publishing zines.  I needed a new creative outlet, a new medium, but struggled to find interest in one.  Like I said, it was clearly an ending to a chapter in my life, and so I moved on.  In November of I moved out of Los Angeles after 11 years there, back to my home town of San Francisco; quite literally starting over.

I will bypass a biographical account of the last year and a half in order to return to the subject of writing about not writing.  I stopped writing a weblog and greatly decreased my social internet activity in general because of the answers I came up with when I asked myself, Why?  Why do I do it?  What do I get out of it?  What do I want from it and what happens to me when I don't get that?

I was not happy with the answers to my questions.  I blogged for the attention.  Specifically: appreciation, praise, positive response in any form.  I could write in a bound paper notebook as I had done throughout my teenage years (before I ever had access to computers) if I simply loved to write and wanted to document my life.  But blogging is about being seen, heard, read by strangers, friends and those who fall in between--Internet Friends--and receiving instant pats on the back or slaps in the face for it.  Not everyone who reads your blog is a friend or even friendly.  Some are mean, obtuse, or just plain annoying.  Is it worth it hearing from these people?  I questioned how much connecting with people really mattered to me when I'd want 99% of them to be silent.  Sometimes I would get no response at all, and that was almost worse because again, I wanted to be read, I wanted to connect, but you can't know how or with whom you are connecting when they do not comment back.  One might at least take comfort in believing (indeed with anxious faith) that your real friends read your blog and that you "got it out there."  What does it mean and what good is it really to get your words out on the internet?  Blogging became an emotional gamble to me that would occasionally pay off--as I felt I had learned the game pretty well--but ultimately the house odds are always against you.  More often than not you leave the game empty-handed.  The house doesn't mind, there are a billion more suckers out there throwing down as if they were high-rolling for the New York Times.  As blogging gives the benefit of a public voice to millions, many of those voices affect self-importance--as I myself had become guilty of on occasion.

I did not want to become that.  I did not want to write for these reasons.  I did not want to care this much about attention of this kind.  I had inadvertently trained myself to write for the reward of the volume and quality of responses I got, and that found its way into my motivation and intentions for writing, which ruined it for me.  Whether I was "connecting" with anyone was really an open semantic and philosophical debate.  What if I had all the connection I needed with people in my real life?  Maybe I even needed a better connection with myself.  I believe that is what happened.  I moved back to San Francisco; where I grew up, where my family lives.  I began a relationship with my present girlfriend, collected a few good people who I count as true friends, found a good satisfying job and a good place to live near my family.  I no longer had the need to socialize on the internet--even though I occasionally do to this day, I do not need it and rarely want it.  I no longer have the time or energy for it.  It's something I do when I'm very bored or very tired.  Something I attribute to age and a bit of wisdom: the most depressing thing I can do is spend my time on something that isn't important to me on a deep and personal level.  After work is done, time is not money--time is life, which is all you have.  I am truly damned if I am spending that time absorbing the cacophonous noise of the social internet, a smorgasbord of judgment and egotism as entertainment.

And now, full circle, here I am facing the irony that I couldn't let go of: I feel the need to blog about not blogging.  There is still truth to the idea that I just want to get this out there, out of my head, but also that I would like to be read and appreciated.  Now though, I am ready to post and then let it go.  Short of disabling the ability to respond, I do not need or want a response, but I'll accept what comes or what does not.  In a way, it is a great lesson to learn and a great discipline to practice, to continue to risk the consequences of exposure.  A sort of Zen approach to blogging is what I intend:

Write from your gut, with your heart, and expect nothing for it; endeavor to achieve true communication; accept and exchange but give no value to praise or criticism--either holds as much consequence as you allow.

What I write is not important.  What I post is not something anyone should read.  It exists as a product of my living, no more or less.

A grain of sand hidden deep in the earth, undifferentiated from its surrounding, another on the surface that it might find its way into the hair of a child playing on the beach; both are profoundly equal, each meaning nothing more than what it is.

If not-trying can be considered a failure--indeed it is the worst kind--then I have failed with great success.

My mind desires the thrill of beginning; even more-so, the preparation for beginning.  If I were the lead runner in a relay I could say I do my job well, but as a solo artist, a starter of good ideas short of completion is as good as a farmer on the Moon.

The lofty "Future History of the Seaside Mining Company" postures itself as if its very wordy weight would propel its own creation forward with perpetual motion.  But gravity and resistance of all kinds will stagger even the greatest velocity to a halt.  Evidence to that fact is my disparate collection of Vox entries thus far.

The gift every artist can self-indulge is the ability and grace to start over, trash the past and move forward.  Reset, Reboot, Quit & Restart--these terms are now gospel in the Age of Augmented Intellect (to riff off of & with respect to Douglas Engelbart)

Incomplete ideas, rhetorical ruminations, and convoluted conceptions to come...

So now, in fairness to myself, if trying can be considered a success in itself, then today that much of it I can say I have achieved.

At 11:55 p.m., February 28th, I began burning my RPM Challenge CD.  Of the required 35 minutes of music, I recorded 35 minutes and 25 seconds.  I did it.  Barring some disaster that prevents me from putting it in the mail tomorrow, I did it.  Frankly, I had no idea how difficult it was going to be.  It is not required to write all the music in February, but I did.  All original and February-fresh!  Except for some lyrics I borrowed from The Postal Service because my song kinda sounded like Such Great Heights to me.  It's not quite a cover, not a mash-up... I don't know what to call it.  Anyway, I'm exhausted and rambling.  I don't even know why I'm posting this.  I guess I just have to announce it after so much hard work.  I'm telling you, especially with computers, music can take forever.  Songs can NEVER be finished.  There are always a thousand ways to try to make it better.  It was an incredible challenge to be forced to finish things and move on in order to complete the required 35 minutes.  Obviously, I used every last minute to make my minutes.  I ended up doing some very weird songs in my opinion.  Stuff I would never have normally done.  But when it came down to the wire, I lost most inhibition and followed my impulses.  Surprisingly, much of this impulse took the form of singing through filters that made my voice sound female.  I'm a closet trans-vocalist.  I love singing as a woman!  This is the brilliance of RPM in my opinion.  When you have 24 hours and still have 15 minutes of music to create and record, you start stopping your self-censorship, which is amazing.  Also, with the help of a midi keyboard controller, I created my entire project solely on a Mac in Garage Band--thank Jobs for that.

Anyway, I'm pretty happy with my songs.  Although every single one could be reworked for another month or so...  But I suppose a MyspaceMusic page is in order at this point.  Funny, I have no interest in touring or doing what it traditionally takes to become a famous musician.  But if I could continue to make music in my room and gain a following through the internet, that would suit me fine.  I'm too old for all that other crap.  I've nearly gone crazy with exhaustion just from consecutive nights of only 5 hours of sleep.

and on that note, good night.

• Life is empty and meaningless.
• One must create one's own meaning in life in order to fill the emptiness.
• Our brains are meaning-machines and must consume and produce meaning in order to function well; the need for meaning is the need for sanity.
• An alternative would be a Buddhist state of becoming the emptiness itself, losing all needs including the need for meaning.  Short of that, we must give our brain what our brain has evolved to need: a reason for being.

• Behavior is learned, habitual, compulsive or instinctive.
• All actions of free will are taken for the attainment of knowledge and wisdom; knowledge for building skills and wisdom for taking right action forthcoming.
• Right actions are those which yield knowledge and wisdom without doing harm to others in the process.

• There is no wrong action, only actions that are not right, those which do not yield knowledge or wisdom or harm others in the process.
• You cannot hurt others but you can harm them.  One feels hurt as a result of harm, and so the origin of hurt is internal while harm comes from the external.
• There is intentional and unintentional harm, neither are the result of right action.  Intention is the excuse of the immature, naïve, ignorant, and irresponsible.

• Pleasure and displeasure inform action.  How one interprets pleasure and displeasure dictates action.
• Wisdom is the interpretation of pleasure and displeasure toward right action.
• As wisdom guides action and action yields wisdom, this is how a life path is formed.  One's responsibility to interpretation is a responsibility for one's own destiny.

"I quit smoking.  It was that or give up drinking, and I'm not going to do that."

He is the man.

2006 was the year I started disappearing.  I must do better in 2007.

I have lobbied for a philosophy of letting go, giving up, quitting, squelching ambition and embracing defeat.  I believe it is the path to truth.
I wish I was better at adopting it myself.

I wish I was better at expressing silence.
I wish I could say nothing and have it really mean something.
I wish I was better at diffusing my desire to consume unchecked.
Or do I still just need to accept myself?

Increasingly I notice trash--the amount of garbage I create is shameful.

I put 20 years of audio tapes into the garbage yesterday.  It was liberating and regretful at once.  I felt like I was putting thousands of hours to waste, those spent making and listening to them.  But I realized those hours were gone, well spent and the relics meant nothing.  Useless little boxes.

Digital is slow at decreasing the amount of things created for future garbage, but there is progress.

I'm not who I used to be.  I've turned a corner.  I've played many parts so far and my roles came to conclusions.  There is no going back to them; my performance was left out on the stage; one night only.

When I was a child I would imagine what it would be like if my house burned down and all my stuff turned to ashes.  I'd be sad for a few stuffed animals and toys that I believed contained a secret living spirit, but in general I would have felt the disaster to be a great fortune.  Total destruction, amnesia, life altering tragedy, starting over from nothing; these ideas thrilled me.

It is my aim for less in the future.  It is a battle with my self always wanting more, always fearing boredom and mediocrity, fearing the loss of inspiration and vitality, fearing death, fearing a life of invisibility without meaning or affect.  It is my aim to conquer loss by having less, by relinquishing ownership of everything--to relinquish ownership of life is to conquer death.  It is my aim to embrace a life without meaning.  Let the weak, unstable and temporal be exposed to the elements and crumble, let the essential structure be revealed, standing on its own unto itself.