[1064] High On Believing

It's getting late and I have to be up early. I'm curious if there's anything on my mind.

I think a lot about spending money. It's more or less unconscious, but my mind will flow between things I've imbued with an impression for their potential. I think it'll be "fun" stuff, or things that will help me avoid getting "bored." I feel a certain obligation to play my instruments the more expensive they were. I like the idea of myself being free of mind enough to reengage practicing like I used to. I don't want to be someone who only had potential instead of tried to make it look and sound like something cool.

I've had a couple instances of buying a large amount of things at once that I was sick of talking myself away from. My new computer was $2500, when I bought a bunch of tools it hit $4500 and I included some household things and Beats. Another tools, house stuff, books, games, and piano hit $2300. I just spent $1700 a few days ago on a series of electronics. These aren't numbers that going to account for a single shimmering stone on a rapper's ring, but for your small-time "professional" who's spent many years of his life getting by on $5000-$10,000 a year, it makes you feel a certain way.

That feeling grows more nagging yet ambiguous when you look around at all of your toys that you don't feel like you're really allowed to play with. That is, the things I buy I also consider a certain kind of work. Yes, it is fun to know how to play a song or use different instruments, but that comes after a great deal of time and work and very very slowly practicing things your fingers can't do yet. It takes focus. It takes dipping into that "forever" compulsive well that sees one destination, learning whatever's in front of me, and blocks out everything else.

I find it very hard to "switch gears." I want to do whatever the thing is all the way. If I have work for 4 days, I want to get as much of the work done and out of the way in 4 days, and then switch into "get to the show" mode. If I pick up my guitar, I want to play it pretty much until I can't anymore, which doesn't lend itself to utilizing a nice day for yard work or running errands or beating myself up for not figuring out how to attract more counseling clients.

I think most people manifest the series of competing impulses as a kind of paralysis. I certainly feel that most days, but I can usually coax myself into a lower-investment activity that still meets my lowest order goals. That's consuming shows or spending hours organizing files. That's picking up and rearranging the house or slowly piecing together something new I've bought. It might be me doing pre/notes or replaying a song that I've learned, mostly, on one of my instruments.

But there's still a hunger. I clicked through 700 videos I've taken since last year of different bands. It sinks in with each one what an amazing opportunity and gift it is to be able to focus and write and perform. There's certainly going to be of-the-era things that make certain songs or styles click more than others, but at bottom, every single person on those stages have done the same thing. They sat, and practiced, and trudged around to perform, and connected in an imprecise way with dozens to millions of fans. Many performers are still perfectly internally tortured and all exactly human.

My head returned recently to a few ideas I think have gotten me into trouble. "Be the change you wish to see in the world" and "If you build it, they will come." One is wholly misrepresenting, "We but mirror the world. All the tendencies present in the outer world are to be found in the world of our body. If we could change ourselves, the tendencies in the world would also change. As a man changes his own nature, so does the attitude of the world change towards him. This is the divine mystery supreme. A wonderful thing it is and the source of our happiness. We need not wait to see what others do.” The other is from Field of Dreams.

I'm one to blaze ahead forward. Right or wrong, before I developed a decent way of checking my impulsivity, I'm down. Let's go fuck up your enemy, build something, or wander aimlessly in any direction that may call to us. When I started to drink and party, I became the "best" at it. When I cared about school, a bad grade was devastating. When George said I'd never play guitar as good as him, I learned how to play riffs I never imagined myself remotely capable of. I'm sitting inside that disposition, typing from my shed, projects and toys lingering and calling. I'm dreaming of things I may yet do in business. I've been to 100 entertaining events this year with 29 still on the way.

I read one of the most insightful articles by what I'm gathering is soon to be one of my new most favorite philosophers Byung Chul-Han. It speaks to what feels like a culturally inexorable detail regarding how we behave towards one another that I've bitched about, but never articulated as clearly for myself. I still don't really have a community. I consistently find the people I'm closest to, or try to be closest to, fuck me in ever deceitful and neglectful ways. All of my effort, all of my "stuff," and all of my fancy ideas have been, in one form or another, uniformly dismissed, ignored, deliberately confused, ridiculed, thrown in my face, or resented.

I feel like I register as a "risk." The nature of that risk, of course, is that I will turn you, us, and everything we're alleged to be to one another into a blog. I will never unhear, even if I forget who said or typed it, "No one wants to be a blog." No one wants the scrutiny, the accountability, or the work. No one wants to be pitted against their best or worst versions of themselves. No one wants to be seen for all they're capable of. No one wants to be summarized in so many words when they'd otherwise entertain an infinitely grand illusion about their place and behavior.

When we fit, the risk is mitigated. When we plug into a family-track or career-track or a Colorado-culture story or Insta-appropriate series of filters, there's almost no risk. You're speaking everyone's language. You're not challenging what's intuitively understood. You're certainly not taking shrooms and deconstructing the nature of "intuition" altogether. You fit. It's snug.

For you to do something like move out to the country, navigate all there is to learn, and throw yourself into the ongoing unknown is unthinkable, unless you're drunkenly talking to me in college and I'm incredibly naive. For you to accept the terms of living with or near me is to, by necessity, dive into yourself and extract the hundreds of pages that you're comprised of, and in the meantime, keep running into the abyss. That's a "spiritual" or "character" thing. You, - maybe - I'm learning, know how to budget. You'd get used to driving a bit more, or a bit less as your opportunities change. If you moved here today, you'd bypass living without water, electricity, the internet, or a place to park.

But what would it really mean for you to do so? I suspect the most likely candidate is someone at the end of their rope. They've tried the "normal" life thing, and can't afford to pay New York loft rent for a trailer each month. They hate their job. They're "lightly" addicted to something, and perhaps a particularly painful interpersonal tragedy occurs. Ring ring, "Hey maaan, you still got that land?" Poor candidate. While this is my refuge, and I'd surely love to facilitate a safe environment for someone else, they don't really want to be here, they want to be away from wherever they are.

Maybe someone has fallen down a Tik-Tok rabbit hole about sustainable living or the collapse of all the used-to-be-cool places due to climate change. Do they really care about the planet? Probably not anymore or less than I do, and I use enough electricity to mirror a 4 bedroom household. What do they wish to bring? Ideas! and maybe a little nest egg. They're full of inspiration, not necessarily perseverance or practicality.

Allie was a romantic dreamer. She literally screamed at me about how she never would have moved out here were it not for the romantic story of it all.

There's plenty of hard workers. I talk to nearly 200 a week. There's plenty of people who have compelling stories for conducting their lives along certain familiar and easily anticipated lanes. Everyone, "could use the extra cash" though. Everyone has been "too busy, with everything going on" to regularly have fun or spend the time to learn something new. Everyone, "just thought or is just sayin" some worn sentiment about the inevitability of their lot in life or the conclusions they've drawn without ever stating the premise.

I don't have kids. I don't have student loans. I don't have a major, or minor, health condition. I'm not trying to build rockets or monopolize markets. My business goals aren't of exploiting and hoarding. I very rarely raise my voice let alone break things. I've thrown thousands of dollars and thousands of hours at my friends. I continue to manifest my dreams in one form or another each day. I speak it. I work it. I offer myself to each next thing poised to exploit me. I invite in spite of my worst feelings and betrayed instincts. I write as something of an infinite regress asking the silence what I should set my sights on and if anyone would share my description of it.

I'm the risk? You don't know what I'm going to say if you need something from me? You don't know if I'll show up or foot the bill? You don't know the nature of the incoming joke? You think I'm going to flare out and give up and leave you stranded? You think I'm keeping some big secret about my feelings or desires that's going to leave you hollowed out and desperate? I'm unreasonable, somehow, because I've parlayed whatever you wish to make of my energy or capacity to articulate it into more money, more time, more…everything besides friends, with each passing year? Is it even about me? Has it ever been?

I wanted the opportunity to support and be apart of what my friends used to discuss they wanted to do so fucking much. I wanted to feel like I belonged amongst people who cared and tried and created the world in spite of their circumstances. All of my wildest dreams included Playboy Mansion-esc numbers of people just around "doing the things they do." You wanted to write a book? Good thing you don't have to spend 40-80 hours a week at your job, right!? You want to travel? For all the jokes I make about living in the middle of nowhere, the airport is 45 minutes away. You've got some strong opinions about encroaching fascism? Study, organize, and grow grass roots from your toes, because you're free to. You think I live far away? Have you ever actually timed how long it takes you to get to Wal-Mart with traffic and stop lights?

My imagination could go on forever. My practical autism doesn't need to be persuaded I could be living there right the fuck now with 2 or 3 analogues of my disposition. Instead, we've isolated and set ourselves up to compete as commodities with every antagonistic call for our attention and bodily resources. We're more trapped by our internalized narratives than any slave has ever been. We're more afraid, and confused, and distrustful because we've lost all notions of "evidence" or what constitutes a value worth preserving and fighting for. We're fluid. We're goo. We're not "we."

I want to get incredibly good at my instruments, but if I didn't want to do so for me, I'd be playing to an audience who talks the entire time through my set. If I wasn't clear on what I was after, and what I continue to get, in moving out here, saving, creating, and investing in my potential, I'd feel like a failure before I ever began. I'd be wholly consumed by what you thought or what "society" deemed abnormal. That's my only window into speculating on what's going on in your body when you contort yourself away from the idea of what you could do with an "extra" $20,000 besides buy toys, tools, and shows.

It's not "one day" I'll see about doing what I like, or need, or value more than how tired I may be or scared and unprepared for the unknown unknowns. It's today, mother fucker. It's tonight, right the fuck now. And it's always right now. It's always my desire and privilege to speak and own and try and dream. Every damning thing my be true AND whatever I have to say about it or am currently working to do about it.

If you don't want space, and time, and money, and as much help doing literally anything you wish to do as I could possibly give, can you wrap your head around how fucked up that is any better than me?

It's too much. This is too many words. I'm too much angst or enthusiasm depending on how tired or unforgiving a mood you are in when you catch this. This is one slice of 1,063 for me, and for you perhaps an entire world-begrudging condescending desperate plea for companionship and solidarity I get once every month or three.

I had a wonderful conversation with Brandy over the weekend. The subject of client feedback came up, and I spoke to all of the good will and positive sentiments and thanks I get. I move to distance myself from it. I can't trust your perception of me when we're not equals. I'm not saying I'm better than my clients as people. I'm saying I'm hyper aware of how they're vulnerable and what I'm versed in. They need that same awareness, or it's like a dog just being happy you're home. It may have evolved to respond to us in a unique and meaningful way, but it doesn't love you for your mind and the house you've built for it.

I think we know we carry ourselves like so many pets. We're creepily happy to regard ours as children. We wag our thumbs with empty "enthusiasm" as so many likes, almost never shares. Fake smiles, muted barks, and endless clawing and scratching at our internal and external perceptions of chaos. We want to be on a leash, pawing for the outside, but without the restraint bound to get lost or kidnapped or hit by a car. Our favorite toys, meme-i-fied caricatures who try to remind us we're not dogs, we routinely rip to shreds, dig holes for burying, and piss on. We need someone else to feed us and decide when it is time to be put down.

I guess there was something on my mind.