My life is ridiculously cool right now. I get to shoot bands and shows and parties and all sorts of other crazy stuff while being surrounded by friends and music and pretty girls and fun. I maintain a sort of uncorruptability to my personal choices (it is insane how many people out there have wanted to get/see me drunk but I still stand by my personal choice not to touch the stuff) and I pretty much always try to be a kind, caring, sharing person. To be happy and to make other people happy with what I do is literally the only thing I want in life, and I'm insanely lucky in that I've found out what makes that goal a reality.
It's a sort of wonderful rut I've dug myself into, but a rut can wear itself down to nothing if it is overrun. Do I expect myself to walk away from a life so deeply ingrained in the Twin Cities music scene? I think not. It's still getting exponentially more interesting as time goes on, and good thing too.
But I want to take it to the next level. I want to rid myself of the chains that keep me from being "on top". Not for fame, or money, or anything like that. Just so I can say someday that I did exactly what I wanted to do with my life. What that is could completely change over time, though probably only in that it gets bigger, grander, more ambitious.
Every day I think about music, and bands, and cool people, and how I find myself in the middle of a perfect storm that should be a far bigger deal than it is. Personal biases aside, I think I know what the hell I'm talking about when I say that the music I find myself following most often is the best in town, bar none. Eat your heart out Twin Cities folkies, because rock and/or roll can never die.
I don't question my ability to do what I do because I'm confident enough to say I do it better and with more passion than anyone else here right now. It has nothing to do with quality or quantity; it has everything to do with the fact that I probably would cease to exist otherwise. I exist because everything that has ever happened in the past has created a present that must continue towards the future.
I remember having my mind completely blown the fuck out by the movie Almost Famous in about January 2008 when I saw it for the first time. It was almost too relevant, too eerily similar to the life I was living and was expecting in the near future. I just watched it for the second time earlier, and while it was still pretty freaky, it didn't have that same sort of total freakout first-time effect. But I picked up on new things, new understandings of my life and the people that surround me.
I ramble on and on and on and on with no real direction, delete sentences that don't make sense, rearrange paragraphs to try to create something that seems logical, try to keep this entry to a digestible size. You probably won't read all of this, and if you do, you probably won't get all of it anyway. But that's fine, because someone once said something along the lines of "Only one person needs to get something for it to make sense." I think he blew his fucking brains out from getting too famous though...
So much of the pressure in life is self-induced. I'm in a position where I could almost take over the world if I knew what the hell I was doing. Aren't they supposed to teach you life skills in school? If they did I sure didn't pay attention, and if they didn't then how the hell did everyone else figure it out? I'm so scatter-brained at times, it keeps my wheels spinning at 100 mph while never reaching the finish line.
I question the means to making the life I want a reality.
Do I really want to have to follow the same path as everyone else?
I feel like my mind is both my greatest asset and my biggest downfall.
It's bizarre how I feel like I'm always getting closer to one of my life's current goals yet it always stays a few feet out of reach, both literally and figuratively.
Does being a social nomad make me incredibly adaptable or incredibly outcast?
There's only so much that can be done with bands in one pair of cities, though I will probably never leave here permanently.
I don't want The American Dream, nor do I really know what it is or if it exists. I want my dream. If I have to be completely stubborn about one thing it's that I will not fail at succeeding. But does not failing also equal success? And who's to say that success even equals the happiness which I have already found?
It's all relative to what you think of you, me, we, us, them, everything, and everyone. Life is literally a relative experience. You are literally the center of the universe... but only to yourself. Your brain is the star that all planets orbit about. You will find personal relevance in literally anything if the timing is right.
Certain songs I've been enjoying for most (or maybe just a few months) of my life are now striking me in ways I could have never imagined because they're hitting me at a time where they're relevant. Lyrics are the primary form obviously, but when was the last time a melody or a rhythm pattern actually hit you in the gut and made you think, "Has someone been retroactively reading my mind?"
I'm William Miller. I'm not William Miller.
I am the everyman. I want nothing more than to be myself.
Is it possible to be two completely opposite things at the same time? I think so. Perhaps even more than you think.
This stream of consciousness brain dumping is brought to you by Mike Minehart at his most electrified hour, approximately 2-3 AM.
I have no ability to write without feeling incredibly awkward about it, even if I care and/or know what I'm talking about. Who's to say that what I say even matters?
I find that me writing vaguely makes things more personal and easy to understand because relevance is easier to derive for anyone. Not that I can't go into some juicy details, it's just that I spew so much specific stuff from my mind elsewhere that this random late-night rambling could not be satisfied with placing itself in one definitive category.
I think I was telling a story earlier but I completely derailed myself. I don't want to go back and change any of it because it's so raw and organic and I like having my grammar keep going on and on and on and on with run on sentences because it amuses me for reasons I don't know why.
Selective perfectionism is pretty much where it's at when it comes to something you're really nitpicky about but don't have the time to do the whole way through.
My desktop is ridiculously overloaded with photo folders.
If money were not such a powerful religion I would already have achieved my penultimate goal in life.
I like the fact that I lost 25 lbs. and got a fairly cool new look, but I don't like waiting for my day to arrive when I'm more than good enough for it to have been years in the past. Maybe that's a good thing though. Or maybe you don't know what the heck I'm talking about again. That's good though. I don't like advertising certain facts about myself unless it would seem to be beneficial in changing things for the better.
My life is ridiculously cool right now. My mind is not cooperating. My body is right where I want it to be. Something else is not. What, I both do and do not know at the same time.
I want to keep going but this blog has just about run out of relevance for me. Maybe it'll be relative again later...
Tuesday, July 28, 2009
Monday, July 6, 2009
A little 4 AM wonderment on the 4th
The "Captain Obvious" in me has already told you what you might already know about memories. But let's try (but probably fail) to get away from constant generalizing for a moment. Also, let's trade shoes. You'll need mine for this next paragraph.
What happens when you decide to break away from your usual pattern of capturing shows on a weekend night and decide to go out to the middle of nowhere and party at a lake cabin on the 4th of July? Surely some long-living memories should come out of it. They just might not be the ones you were hoping or planning for.
That's not to say I had any expectations going into a trip up to a buddy's cabin on the 4th. It's just that even though my life has followed a steady upward trend, I still feel completely naïve at times. Perhaps it's a lingering effect of my less-fulfilling past, a sense of things I have not accomplished, or my hopeful obliviousness to the future.
Long story short, I went to a party at a cabin on Sugar Lake, about 70 miles out of the cities. Made a few new friends, had a good time, watched some fireworks while on a boat, felt out of place on occasion, but still enjoyed myself for the most part. Almost a pretty cookie-cutter experience on the surface, but it's what lies beneath that makes our memories (in fact, all of us as people) unique and interesting.
My over-thinking mind finally got a chance to just let loose around 2 AM though. By then, everyone had basically headed in for the night, while I remained ever-awake and restless. (I was up till 5 AM at another party the night before, hence the need to do something.)
With no one left to talk to, I walked out to the end of the dock and sat down on the bench, gazing across the water at the few specks of campfire light that still dotted the edge of the lake. A boat would occasionally rev in the distance, and one of the passer-by crafts proudly blasted the aforementioned "I'm on a Boat" song as it tore around the lake in the wee hours of July 5th.
(This is from the daytime, but it's a view of straight across the lake from the bench, which faces west.)
But for the most part, it was a calm, undisturbed moment for me to sit and ponder in. I looked to my left and saw the (almost) full moon shining in its glory, and remarked at how amazing it was to think that it could make the night seem bright, yet serene. To my slight-right was the northwest, and beyond the trees I saw the faint glow of what was probably St. Cloud far off in the distance. Above it was the Big Dipper, and when the water was completely calm you could actually see it reflected in the lake as well.
I was all alone at the lake, but strangely I knew that someone else was watching all of this with me too. I texted a friend who I was reminded of and I knew had to be experiencing the same thing I was at that moment of serenity.
I stared at the lake until I grew chilly, then grabbed a jacket and went back out to the bench. After some more gazing around the lake I decided to lay down and stare straight up at the stars, something I don't think I had really done in years.
A million thoughts continued to flow through my mind as the moon began to yellow and finally disappeared below the trees around 3:45 AM, leaving nothing but the stars to light the night momentarily. And for a moment, for the first time since I don't remember when, everything seemed to stop.
Alone, with nothing but the stars. This... was... peace. A fleeting feeling, but one that shouldn't have to happen but once in a great while.
I sat back up and pondered what to do next. There was no reason for me to go to sleep, but I didn't want to sit around for another 5 hours until people started waking up. So I decided to leave the lake at 4:30 AM and drive back to the cities, with no destination in mind.
Whenever I make an extended trip, I always pop in an album or two to accompany the journey. On a whim, I chose to start with the new album from The Alarmists, The Overhead Left. Instantly my mind was blown (what I like to call a "mindfuck", in that it fucks with your mind) by the immediate relevance of the opening lines on "Flutter and Fly".
A summer day, but you feel cold... cold
Another day that you grow old... old
And I forget, the things I'm told...
Well you know time will take it's toll...
So simple, yet a near-verbatim summary of a lot of what I was experiencing on that dock only minutes before. Once I reached the 694/494 loop via I-94 at about 5:15 AM, I chose to go down the less-traveled (for me) 494 and popped in Solid Gold's Bodies of Water. For some reason, it made perfect sense to listen to it at the crack of dawn, and I jumped off 494 to MN 55, cutting east towards downtown Minneapolis.
The morning mist was pretty cool on parts of I-94 & 494, but once I got into Golden Valley on MN 55 it really started to make me geek out at how amazing it was going down misty roads I had never been on, seeing things like the downtown skyline from a new perspective, and just being awake with literally no one else on the roads at this beautiful hour.
I meandered around downtown for a while, making a point of it to pass by The Music Box Theatre on 14th and Nicollet where exciting things may be happening soon (I had never knowingly seen it before), and eventually decided to cut over to the U of M campus. It was time for a new album when I got there, so I put the self-titled album from This World Fair.
Another mindfuck hit me with the This is not my destination / It's only where I'm used to standing line that opens the first track, "Can't Stop Falling". I went to the U for the better part of 5 years, and while it did help make me who I am today, it's definitely not something I foresee being really that important to my future. It's just that I still can't seem to get away from it either...
I decided to head towards St. Paul, and took University Avenue the whole way from campus all the way past I-35E. I was intrigued by all that I saw on the parts of University that I don't frequent east of the Midway area, plus the fact that it runs right behind the State Capitol is pretty sweet too. I continued east, deciding that it would be cool to check out different parts of roads that I knew but hadn't seen beyond certain points.
By this point, I was nearing the end of the album. The final track of TWF's self-titled album, "Count To Ten", includes a powerful repeating line during the outro:
This isn't what we wanted
We're back to where we started
This particular line gave me chills down my spine one time while driving back the day after the Cake/Ari Herstand show at Concordia College in Moorhead back in April 2007. But at about 6:30 AM on this trip, I found myself passing by the house of a close friend's place, which was where I had started my day on the 4th, literally right as the line kicked in. Total mindfuck once again.
I was amazed to actually find someone still awake at the place this early the day after the 4th of July, and hung out for a bit before leaving to drive back to Albert Lea. My wide-eyed curiosity then finally began to fade into sleep-deprivation, which is definitely not a good thing when you've still got over an hour left to go on a drive. Slammed a Dr. Pepper at a rest stop and finally made it back home around 9:30 AM, right in time to crash until about 5 PM. Though I had only been awake for about 21 hours, it felt like I had experienced twice that between all the driving around and time spent at the cabin.
Life is about making memories that last until better ones come along. And in this case, I expect this one to last for quite a while...
What happens when you decide to break away from your usual pattern of capturing shows on a weekend night and decide to go out to the middle of nowhere and party at a lake cabin on the 4th of July? Surely some long-living memories should come out of it. They just might not be the ones you were hoping or planning for.
That's not to say I had any expectations going into a trip up to a buddy's cabin on the 4th. It's just that even though my life has followed a steady upward trend, I still feel completely naïve at times. Perhaps it's a lingering effect of my less-fulfilling past, a sense of things I have not accomplished, or my hopeful obliviousness to the future.
Long story short, I went to a party at a cabin on Sugar Lake, about 70 miles out of the cities. Made a few new friends, had a good time, watched some fireworks while on a boat, felt out of place on occasion, but still enjoyed myself for the most part. Almost a pretty cookie-cutter experience on the surface, but it's what lies beneath that makes our memories (in fact, all of us as people) unique and interesting.
My over-thinking mind finally got a chance to just let loose around 2 AM though. By then, everyone had basically headed in for the night, while I remained ever-awake and restless. (I was up till 5 AM at another party the night before, hence the need to do something.)
With no one left to talk to, I walked out to the end of the dock and sat down on the bench, gazing across the water at the few specks of campfire light that still dotted the edge of the lake. A boat would occasionally rev in the distance, and one of the passer-by crafts proudly blasted the aforementioned "I'm on a Boat" song as it tore around the lake in the wee hours of July 5th.
(This is from the daytime, but it's a view of straight across the lake from the bench, which faces west.)
But for the most part, it was a calm, undisturbed moment for me to sit and ponder in. I looked to my left and saw the (almost) full moon shining in its glory, and remarked at how amazing it was to think that it could make the night seem bright, yet serene. To my slight-right was the northwest, and beyond the trees I saw the faint glow of what was probably St. Cloud far off in the distance. Above it was the Big Dipper, and when the water was completely calm you could actually see it reflected in the lake as well.
I was all alone at the lake, but strangely I knew that someone else was watching all of this with me too. I texted a friend who I was reminded of and I knew had to be experiencing the same thing I was at that moment of serenity.
I stared at the lake until I grew chilly, then grabbed a jacket and went back out to the bench. After some more gazing around the lake I decided to lay down and stare straight up at the stars, something I don't think I had really done in years.
A million thoughts continued to flow through my mind as the moon began to yellow and finally disappeared below the trees around 3:45 AM, leaving nothing but the stars to light the night momentarily. And for a moment, for the first time since I don't remember when, everything seemed to stop.
Alone, with nothing but the stars. This... was... peace. A fleeting feeling, but one that shouldn't have to happen but once in a great while.
I sat back up and pondered what to do next. There was no reason for me to go to sleep, but I didn't want to sit around for another 5 hours until people started waking up. So I decided to leave the lake at 4:30 AM and drive back to the cities, with no destination in mind.
Whenever I make an extended trip, I always pop in an album or two to accompany the journey. On a whim, I chose to start with the new album from The Alarmists, The Overhead Left. Instantly my mind was blown (what I like to call a "mindfuck", in that it fucks with your mind) by the immediate relevance of the opening lines on "Flutter and Fly".
A summer day, but you feel cold... cold
Another day that you grow old... old
And I forget, the things I'm told...
Well you know time will take it's toll...
So simple, yet a near-verbatim summary of a lot of what I was experiencing on that dock only minutes before. Once I reached the 694/494 loop via I-94 at about 5:15 AM, I chose to go down the less-traveled (for me) 494 and popped in Solid Gold's Bodies of Water. For some reason, it made perfect sense to listen to it at the crack of dawn, and I jumped off 494 to MN 55, cutting east towards downtown Minneapolis.
The morning mist was pretty cool on parts of I-94 & 494, but once I got into Golden Valley on MN 55 it really started to make me geek out at how amazing it was going down misty roads I had never been on, seeing things like the downtown skyline from a new perspective, and just being awake with literally no one else on the roads at this beautiful hour.
I meandered around downtown for a while, making a point of it to pass by The Music Box Theatre on 14th and Nicollet where exciting things may be happening soon (I had never knowingly seen it before), and eventually decided to cut over to the U of M campus. It was time for a new album when I got there, so I put the self-titled album from This World Fair.
Another mindfuck hit me with the This is not my destination / It's only where I'm used to standing line that opens the first track, "Can't Stop Falling". I went to the U for the better part of 5 years, and while it did help make me who I am today, it's definitely not something I foresee being really that important to my future. It's just that I still can't seem to get away from it either...
I decided to head towards St. Paul, and took University Avenue the whole way from campus all the way past I-35E. I was intrigued by all that I saw on the parts of University that I don't frequent east of the Midway area, plus the fact that it runs right behind the State Capitol is pretty sweet too. I continued east, deciding that it would be cool to check out different parts of roads that I knew but hadn't seen beyond certain points.
By this point, I was nearing the end of the album. The final track of TWF's self-titled album, "Count To Ten", includes a powerful repeating line during the outro:
This isn't what we wanted
We're back to where we started
This particular line gave me chills down my spine one time while driving back the day after the Cake/Ari Herstand show at Concordia College in Moorhead back in April 2007. But at about 6:30 AM on this trip, I found myself passing by the house of a close friend's place, which was where I had started my day on the 4th, literally right as the line kicked in. Total mindfuck once again.
I was amazed to actually find someone still awake at the place this early the day after the 4th of July, and hung out for a bit before leaving to drive back to Albert Lea. My wide-eyed curiosity then finally began to fade into sleep-deprivation, which is definitely not a good thing when you've still got over an hour left to go on a drive. Slammed a Dr. Pepper at a rest stop and finally made it back home around 9:30 AM, right in time to crash until about 5 PM. Though I had only been awake for about 21 hours, it felt like I had experienced twice that between all the driving around and time spent at the cabin.
Life is about making memories that last until better ones come along. And in this case, I expect this one to last for quite a while...
Life is about making memories that last until better ones come along.
I'm struck by this strange thought that I just had, and I feel inspired to poke around the inside of my head (via blog post) until something more tangible comes out.
For one, memories are fleeting. We find it harder and harder to remember things the further into the past they occur. The more unique, unexpected, or profound the memory is, the stronger we retain the ability to remember it. And while technology gives us the ability to add tangibility to our memories (I'm a photographer, guess what a lot of my memories are made of?), it's not like we can always treat these things as eternal.
In this regard, I am quite grateful. My life has followed a fairly consistent and steadily-increasing level of "happiness" for years, so much so that I have a difficult time remembering much of anything about high school and beforehand. That's how much more "fun" life has been for me these past few years.
I mean c'mon, how could you not have fun when your passion involves spending a lot of time with a diverse cast of characters in a realm of creative bliss? That's what photographing the music scene is like for me. Sure I don't make any money at it (at least not yet), but I'll be damned if it isn't what I want to do for a long, long time.
I've made so many incredible memories through shooting music and being at shows, but as time goes on I find that most of my older photos just don't carry the same weight they used to. There will always be a few photos that never die, but who's to say that I won't someday capture something that tops even the epic-ness of that or other photos I tout as amazing?
Perhaps that is what drives me to always be at shows, looking to outdo even my own best work. But this is the kind of mentality that has killed many a person (Michael Jackson comes to mind in a sense) when really all I want in life is to be happy and make other people happy with what I do.
If it were possible to truly separate the need for constant self-improvement from happiness, perhaps we'd all be living as Buddhist monks. But this is where the memory factor comes in. As time goes on, that which is "now" becomes then. "Then" becomes older, less tangible, further alienated from the life we live in the "new" now, even if our level of contentment remains. We inevitably either long for a better "now" or for it to be more like "then". (Is this where the liberal/conservative line separates?)
Truly, competition is the enemy of contentment. Time itself has become a competition of sorts. It's like we're asked to play a game... it's called "Fulfill all of your ever-changing dreams as fast as you can before you die." Has anyone ever won? Perhaps, but were we granted immorality we'd inevitably raise the bar into infinity over the course of eternity.
On the bright side, raising the bar is largely a sign of progress. And as our standards rise, that which falls by the wayside doesn't remain as ever-present in our memory. But we also find ourselves locked into a need to reach that next level, which only begins the cycle anew.
I'm going to abruptly cut off this blog entry and begin working on a relevant follow-up regarding the 4th of July. Why? Because if I keep going on this one you're never going to be able to read it all. Shame on me for writing novels I suppose, but those who truly know me know I always have a lot on my mind. I just want to make it easier for you (and I) to digest...
For one, memories are fleeting. We find it harder and harder to remember things the further into the past they occur. The more unique, unexpected, or profound the memory is, the stronger we retain the ability to remember it. And while technology gives us the ability to add tangibility to our memories (I'm a photographer, guess what a lot of my memories are made of?), it's not like we can always treat these things as eternal.
In this regard, I am quite grateful. My life has followed a fairly consistent and steadily-increasing level of "happiness" for years, so much so that I have a difficult time remembering much of anything about high school and beforehand. That's how much more "fun" life has been for me these past few years.
I mean c'mon, how could you not have fun when your passion involves spending a lot of time with a diverse cast of characters in a realm of creative bliss? That's what photographing the music scene is like for me. Sure I don't make any money at it (at least not yet), but I'll be damned if it isn't what I want to do for a long, long time.
I've made so many incredible memories through shooting music and being at shows, but as time goes on I find that most of my older photos just don't carry the same weight they used to. There will always be a few photos that never die, but who's to say that I won't someday capture something that tops even the epic-ness of that or other photos I tout as amazing?
Perhaps that is what drives me to always be at shows, looking to outdo even my own best work. But this is the kind of mentality that has killed many a person (Michael Jackson comes to mind in a sense) when really all I want in life is to be happy and make other people happy with what I do.
If it were possible to truly separate the need for constant self-improvement from happiness, perhaps we'd all be living as Buddhist monks. But this is where the memory factor comes in. As time goes on, that which is "now" becomes then. "Then" becomes older, less tangible, further alienated from the life we live in the "new" now, even if our level of contentment remains. We inevitably either long for a better "now" or for it to be more like "then". (Is this where the liberal/conservative line separates?)
Truly, competition is the enemy of contentment. Time itself has become a competition of sorts. It's like we're asked to play a game... it's called "Fulfill all of your ever-changing dreams as fast as you can before you die." Has anyone ever won? Perhaps, but were we granted immorality we'd inevitably raise the bar into infinity over the course of eternity.
On the bright side, raising the bar is largely a sign of progress. And as our standards rise, that which falls by the wayside doesn't remain as ever-present in our memory. But we also find ourselves locked into a need to reach that next level, which only begins the cycle anew.
I'm going to abruptly cut off this blog entry and begin working on a relevant follow-up regarding the 4th of July. Why? Because if I keep going on this one you're never going to be able to read it all. Shame on me for writing novels I suppose, but those who truly know me know I always have a lot on my mind. I just want to make it easier for you (and I) to digest...
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