Hydration

Well, let's put it out there. This is a project I did based on John Frusciante's "Life's a Bath", off of his most pained, fragmented record, "Smile From the Streets You Hold". I spent the first part of the day covering the song and the second part assembling the movie.

The original, for comparison purposes (graphic drug use).

Emulation

From the Tao Te Ching:

"The ancient masters were profound and subtle.

Their wisdom was unfathomable.

There is no way to describe it--

All we can describe is their appearance.

They were careful

As someone crossing an iced-over stream.

Alert as a warrior in enemy territory.

Courteous as a guest.

Fluid as melting ice.

Shapable as a block of wood.

Receptive as a valley.

Clear as a glass of water.

Do you have the patience to wait

Until your mud settles and the water is clear?

Can you remain unmoving

Until the right action arises by itself?"

Fellini, Lynch... amateurs...

This is a PSA on the dangers of trees. This is also me learning how to use iMovie, and then export the finished product to Youtube:

Dendrophobia

(Yet) Another Green World

Shoot, I guess I'm feeling generous! So why not enjoy this ambient remix/fool-around thing I did with Brian Eno's marvelous "Another Green World"?

http://www.mediafire.com/?nlm21inmnou

It sounds a bit like Ratatat to me, or at least from what I know of them. Put it on, zone out, do other stuff, let me know if you like it or not.

Edit: just realized I uploaded an .aup file, which might be problematic for those w/o Audacity. Re-uploaded as an mp3, should be good to go.

A Baby for Pree

Everything that has come out of my guitar or my voice over the past two days has sounded like a van made of broken glass driving over a box full of birds... except this video. It sounds somewhat OK. "A Baby for Pree", by Neutral Milk Hotel. As usual, it deals with Mangum's prevailing themes of sex, children, family, fluids and all emotions attendant thereunto.

"Blistering Pree, all smiling and swollen

Makes babies to breathe, with their hearts hanging open

All over the sheets, as soft as beets

In some brown dresser drawer

And with bees in her breath, and the rest of her ringing

They'll sting through her chest, with a force hard and beating

Until wonderfully wet she will get

Until she's soaked inside her clothes

And there is no sorry to be sorry for

For a roll around the floor one afternoon so sound and soft

It made her swallow all her sweat

With every bit of breath she coughs

And when the day it came to pour

All her babies all across the bathroom floor

She will be swimming in them all forever more"

The original, for comparison purposes

The Unquiet Mind

I would like to talk to you about schizophrenia, as it is a subject that has been somewhat on my mind lately. I find myself feeling a deep sympathy for the plight of the schizophrenic-- but I must also confess that I feel the faintest tang of envy, or at least curiosity, for those who experience the world in such an intense way. I know that to experience the world as they do would ultimately be quite exhausting, and ravaging on the soul in ways I can't even imagine, but I would like-- if only for a brief time-- to see what they see, think how they think. Not only out of pure curiosity, but also out of a desire to help them by better understanding their affliction. Recently on television I saw the story of a young girl named January, who was a brilliant child (a tested IQ of 140 at age FIVE) but who was possessed of a terrible case of schizophrenia. My heart broke for her, and for her parents. They seemed horribly besieged by the difficulties of not only raising a child, but raising a child with such a florid mental disease. She saw imaginary figures, animals, and was compelled to strange thoughts and actions by her blazing mental landscapes. Her parents said that the only way that they could get any peace (the child barely slept) was by overstimulating her as much as humanly possible. Even at a very young age, she was captivated by noises, sights, sounds, crowds-- perhaps her over-active brain could only comfortably relate to such chaos. She seemed charming, intelligent, beautiful, but plugged into a staggering mental fire that was quite beyond most people. In fact several schizophrenics, from what I can tell, seem to be afflicted by an excess of energy, of spiritual combustion, of a fused switch in the brain setting all the dials to "11". The drawings of Louis Wain, if they do indeed depict what the world might look like to someone with schizophrenia, describe to me a life in which every single thing is ravingly intense, too much for the human organism to handle. As I've said, this fills me with sorrow and a desire to understand (if I am able), and a deep sense of respect for the capacities of the human organism. If we are capable of producing such a welter of painful energy, might we be able to harness it in some way? Use the capacity of the brain to imbue the world with such vividness? Can we honor the schizophrenic by letting them point us to what we are capable of? Of course it goes without saying that it is our duty, as human beings, to try and ameliorate their suffering as much as possible. But in some way, on some level, I feel like we might be able to transcend this horrible disorder, meet it, learn from it, and perhaps integrate it into the human condition and ease its painful sting.

More about January Schofield

More about Louis Wain

In Which I Explain My Blog Title, Again

So tonight, as I was juggling my ever-faithful 6-lb. ball, it occurred to me that all my friends, the ones who have spent their lives being careful, conscientious, hardworking, and diligent about trying to help the planet, environmentally speaking, are probably going to be far overbalanced in no time at all by a bunch of greedy, reckless, short-selling agents of entropy, fucking barbarians ignorant of the Tao. I'm speaking of course of the BP oil spill. Think of it... all that hard work and love, helpless in the face of millions of gallons of chemicals.

Why? is the question I asked myself. Why is this? Why does this happen? Why do we do what we do? Why do we keep doing it? In short, what the fuck?

As usual when questions like this arise, I took a look up at the sky. And the answer seemed very clear-- it's a dark universe, folks. On average, our entire cosmos is but three degrees above absolute zero. Those little bright stellar specks of plasma, impressive as they are, are nestled in still greater pockets of empty space, darkness, coldness, silence. 95% of our universe is void to our eyes, dark matter, dark energy. In any system, entropy tends to increase, not the other way around. Electrical charges will always take the path of least resistance. And so on.

I think you can see where I'm going with this. Human beings are manifestations of life and order, and life and order are more aberrant than not. Generally speaking, it will always be more likely that we hurt rather than heal, because hurting and healing are just manifestations of larger forces. And entropy, the darker of the two, is easier. Anytime we flow bright instead of dark, we're beating the odds in a pretty rigged casino.

So what, you're saying, we should just give up? Well, hell no! Quite the opposite! I'm not even saying any of this should fill us with sorrow, or joy. Things just are what they are. If we are strange little burning emblems of what might be, then that's our cosmic duty and we will fulfill it. My desire to destroy Glenn Beck, for example, a part of me, is counterbalanced by a small part of Glenn Beck desiring to destroy people like me. Without Glenn Beck, that part of myself would lack definition, focus. Without me, a small part of Glenn Beck would be similarly diminished. And the cosmic push and pull between me and Glenn Beck (that raving charlatan) are what power the spin of the galaxies.

I guess what I'm trying to say is, we are surrounded on all sides by darkness, but that just makes whatever energy we can muster shine all the more. And that's what being a Bright Animal is about.