Summer Time

It is summer.  Summer is typified by laziness, excess, vacations and a time for relaxation.  I have many things that I do during the summer, although "Do" implies some sort of meaning or purpose to these actions.  Really, what I mean is they fill my time until something better comes along.  As my chronological meter racks up the counters, I am beginning to find that these moment holders are less and less satisfying.  Certainly they are useful for some minor recreation, but to waste hours and hours on them eats at the portion of my being that longs to create.  I needs must find something productive that entertains.

It is within this time that I also read.  I read quite frequently, but there are times when I experience a piece which is different.  It is more than what I understand as writing.  For me the experience isn't like reading, it is being let into a persons very existence.  Their ability to communicate dwarfs mine own in such a profound way as to be beyond compare.  But compare I do, and I'm filled with malaise.  That there is a being in the world who possesses creative power on a plane that I cannot fathom has the power to disconnect me from the fields I do inhabit.

But in juxtaposition there are these empty chronological calories.  I consume them and am bloated with them, but they do not fill me with meaning or substance.  I desire more meaty means of defining myself and want no more of this black sweetness which I have inundated myself with.  Despite my indolence, I want to strive onward to slimming my literary figure to a razor sharpness.  I will hone my wit and strengthen the temper of my metaphor until I am at least satisfied that I will suit my seat nicely, and not be forced to squeeze into a niche to small for me.

Things people Say

With he shear volume of possible sentences and thought constructions reaching off into the infinite, I often find that people say ridiculous things.  Not you garden variety ridiculous stuff that you get out of your televangelists or UFO nuts, but stuff that if people really though about it, they might reconsider the very fabric of their reality.

There is no such thing as Magic.  Now, by this sentence, completely rational, well thinking people mean that every action has a determinable and obvious cause, that can be broken down into a series of forces interacting in a clear and concise manner.  That there is no event that happens without cause, or is totally inexplicable.  This, I believe is true.  I also believe that magic is real.  When I say magic, I mean those little bits of information received at such a subconscious level of thinking that they don't even register.  Love at first sight, Deja Vu, recollections of only the vaguest emotions without any sights, sounds or smells.  Things that you look at and don't need to wonder about, because you know within the core of your being, without explanation.

 "I don't know.'  I hate that one.  It isn't used as an honest admission of lacking knowledge though, its used as a white flag.  I hear people say this all the time,  sometimes I say it, and mean; "I honestly don't want to think about this topic in depth, please just tell me what the hell your talking about."  Now, in some situations, I understand, this is useful, you shouldn't go around trying to engage in rigorous mental chess with every conversation.  But I even hear it in academic settings in which your supposed to be challenged.  It okay to not know something.  It doesn't label you inept or a moron, it shows your strength, that you can admit something beyond your ken and work to bring it in.

For me, Santa Claus exists as well.  Of course I don't believe that there is a happy red suited man living in the frigged north giving toys to all good christian children, and coal to the bad ones.  The physical aspects of Santa Claus are of secondary concern to me.  What really matters are those thing that make this more than just a pleasant fairy tale for boring winter nights.  The stuff that latches onto those human parts of us that are altruistic and giving, that want to imagine, even if just for one day, that everyone COULD get along if we just tried hard enough.  That if you could make everyone, everywhere, happy for just one day, the world would change forever.  And aren't those lessons we want everyone to learn no matter what?  That its good to want the best for everyone, even yourself.  Or that its worth fighting those impossible battles.  There is more magic, because its difficult, maybe impossible to explain why we know that those fights have to be fought, even though often we lose.  But whats more magical than the improbable wining out over the sum of all possible probability's to the contrary. 

Statistics say it isn't magic, but our human brains don't think in statistics, they think in human terms.  Long shots are miracles, the stuff of myth and legend.  Magic.

An Analysis

Music is cyclical.  Setting aside the compositional aspects of repeating rhythms and themes which conclude within the arch of the song, we are left with the design of it all.  It invokes our emotions and is made from them.  Did the earliest people whistle while they worked?  Did their mothers sing them to sleep before language?  When one of their own died, did they wail out the grief, or was it a melodic recitation of their life and the pain the hole their existence leaves behind?  These are some interesting questions, but I will be looking at music, as I interpret its effects on myself, without actual music.  Seeing as how I have no musical talent to speak of (I sing in the key of off), I will be using words, which are still a powerful aspect of the process sometimes.

At a broad view, music is designed to entertain and communicate.  What and how it does this is as varried as the aspects of the human condition. But there are certain aspects that are consistent, which ply on our feelings.  When I listen to music, it draws out feelings that I have.  Brings them to the light without diluting them.  When I'm angry, songs that have an alien quality to them, something which sets aside humanity is a commonality.  The best ones also use a human voice to counterpoint this, and the lyrics will cut through the pseudo-psychic bullshit to whats pricking at my anger.  It pierces the shell and pulls out the pain, bringing it to the fore of my consciousness.  The pain envelops me and drowns everything in a white-hot rage.  It burns cold and bright, leaving a core of logic and calm, and I can move through it without fear.   

I have also found, that in depression, music can accentuate it to a point.  The sadness that I feel is nothing when compared to the simple joy of being alive to hear this wonderfully apt song.  My hurting is real, so real that I relish the chance to feel even that.  I am able to grab some fucking happiness out of the black, and push back the fear and melancholy with the knowledge that just feeling, even torment, is more powerful than anything.  I find euphoria within it, and I'm just happy to know I can feel.

Love songs.  To write about love songs, is like drawing stick figures for the ceiling of the Sistine chapel, or seeing a sunset through purple glass.  It is inadequate in every way, though I am compelled.  Even the ones about unrequited love bring a swelling of the heart, and an insane happiness with them.  I wish ever so fervently that I could write something that could move someone as much as music can move me.  I dream of love in terms of love songs, and sonnets, beautiful and whole, their composition a masterwork of longing and fantasies.  It isn't that music creates these flights of feeling, but they are always there, nestled in the deeps, just waiting the right touch to let them free.  I will forever quest for the proper string of characters to convey who I am, and though my quest may be fruitless, I will never quit.