Thursday, June 24, 2010

When the trumpets cry in unison . . .

You kinda gotta march.

I won't go into detail. My aid is in demand, it's up to me to build upon my resources. My heart is wayward and my mind is chasing it in circles. I can't get a grip on time or priority most of the day. I don't feel cohesive and I'm pretty sure I won't appreciate help. This is about me getting a hold of me. I ought to be able to. Or else why live? If I can't focus and take meaningful action, why live?


I keep trying in vain to relate this blog to being American, but I do wonder if non-Americans are capable of the type of faith-crisis born from too much opportunity and too much freedom. I can think what I want to in this country, I can push my brand and make money on products I put my heart into . . .

Everyday I'm confronted with a haze of ideas, all feeding on one another and never leading me to a definable staging ground. I can sit in front of this laptop for hours with fingers poised, struck by the nuisance of doubt.

I can do better but not for others. I can't learn the way with others yelling. I may not be ready for half the responsibilities I'm poised to accept, but I'm tired of having little and doing little.

For all this venting I might as well have a therapist, but there's no money for that, just people in need and me with a bunch of hovering talent.

Wednesday, June 23, 2010

No gods, No homo.

No homo - no gayness. Lets remove the literal definition and use the subtext of efeminite, vulnerable, weak.

No gods - no excuses, no rules, no divine reason. Just us.

No rulers, no crutches.
No gods, no homo.

No standards, no strangeness.
No purpose, just vision . . . our vision.

I told myself I needed a pen and paper to write. I told myself I needed pencils, erasers and sharpeners and how-to books to draw. I told myself I needed to learn perspective and research shapes before I could be a good story-board artist. I told myself I needed to do this in order to communicate to the real story-board artists, the people finding the locations, the DPs, the actors. I told myself I wanted to communicate windows into the story to the artists that drew the comics containing the stories I had written. I told myself I could learn photoshop to help with digitizing the project and after effects to make it cooler.

I told myself I could learn the piano and a beat machine to make custom tracks for the work and sell other stuff to up'n'comers. I told myself I could recruit fresh, empassioned creators for a production team in my old bedroom near my school, build workable PCs, hustle for extra cash and make stories out of nonsense just to prove that I could. I told myself I would research the masters of cinema and watch the tricks they called new that now don't get noticed unless someone's pointing them out, teach you how to look, how to appreciate what you see.

I told myself I could dance salsa and then become a b-boy and learn jujitsu and boxing and how to swim better and climb rocks, to be fit and functional and impress the need for a better diet. I told myself I could transform me into the hero capable of all these ventures and do it all cleverly with ferocity and focus.

I told myself I could be gravitational, learn other languages, take improv classes, acting classes, stand-up, open mics, to learn how to work with actors, to help break out of my shell, to earn a space for these words to blossom and inspire other folks on the fence of their own becoming. I would learn my soul's pitch, perfect it and publish it. I would create the buzz that makes the businesses want to pimp me out. My fiction would be in demand.

I told myself by then I'd have a few dozen shorts in the world and a book on the way. I write editorials in the Times. Circles I hadn't heard of would want my mind. My business side would spin off some copy-writing and grant-writing and business plan development and I'd make money.

I told myself I'd learn web-development to market my own stuff and learn a new skill I could push in the process. I'd self-promote, get businesses up. I'd teach kids how to do it all, I'd teach kids in after school programs in neighborhoods where they don't learn how to martial what's god-given into rights under-utilized, like the right to the pursuit of happiness, not just power or noteriety. Happiness.

People ask me why I'm down on myself. My mom, my boss. They don't know I have no leaders, no one projecting a truth of who I want to be, on the other side of faults that distinguish who I am today. They tell me to appreciate my accomplishments, like?

I'm here to make a difference, that's what the vision tells me, but I ain't makin shit. Double-negatives are about as far as I get and I can't figure out if I'm that close or that far from it. What would make the difference is doing the hard thing every day but every day is common enough to forget...until it's not and then I'm fucked or dead.

I've never let the anxiety get too deep. My mom taught me to fear reprecussion less and less with every mind altering guilt-trip she went through. It passed through me like a hot wave threatening to tear my world apart, until I got ice cold. Now I can't feel urgency. It's not her fault, it's just how I am. Born with a numb strength, passive to perfection. A seed of doubt was planted with a dad that couldn't stay and a girl years later that had nothing to say. Now unrequited love keeps me from blowing the world away, thats how I figure it at least and I expect no one to put their finger on it.

I let things go cause peace is too precious to lose and opportunities whither in my life till they're worn out. I'm getting older and sadder and my only comfort comes from the loss of joy from finite pleasures. The long term is more important now but I don't know how to work for it. My focus is garbage and I have too many loves waiting to spend my impulse and waste my willpower.

I need some spiritual recalibrating but I hate the way fate can call that in; with a drunk driver or a plane crash or a crack-head with a box cutter. What should you fear when the universe can't depend on you? When your country can't find pride in you? When your city doesn't include you and your community doesn't recognize you on the corner? Who loves a living ghost? And true love is for men, not boys. Boys won't get killed for it, and men prepare to die for it.

I am an American. I know nothing of the weight of my footprint. I guess with flawed perspective and fall into deep sleeps every night. All leadership seems try hard, I wanted guidance when I was 3, 5, 8, 12, 15, 17, 19, 23. I watch ambition in the world and I want to laugh sometimes. It doesn't work. I respect stubborn people now, fueled by their own bullshit and impracticality so much that others can't help but give in.

Renouncing age and resource is the best I got, hope is an old horse that shouldv'e been put down a long time ago. But, it's also an old friend. I want to leave something behind, some story with some importance and some proof of worthwhile things. I'd love for that love to be in a little me somewhere someday . . .


I told myself I'd have a family with enough money to entertain the vision of my son and daughter. I'd keep them safe and teach them how to respect their own power. I'd entertain them and listen and love them. They'd see the world from a seat on my shoulders. They'd see how people in love work together and stay young together when they watch me and mom. They'd know magic.

I've sold myself a dozen lifetimes of work accomplished by a better man than I. this is my addiction, it is my hell.

...but I am only 27 and I am not dead yet. I cannot yet speak of the end of things, only the beginnings, only the hesitations. Ignorance is evidence of possibility. Perhaps another cosmic joke is looming. Perhaps the deeds will fulfill themselves through me. Perhaps the vision is not to be trifled with and time was part of the equation. Perhaps the magic was not lost, but like all growing things, manifests at an impercepible rate. Perhaps I am not alone and somewhere I am being rooted for.

Every moment, everyday. Every moment.