Musings on the state of things

This probably doesn't make any sense.

Just take it for what it is.

If I'm pretentious, then you probably should've figured that out by now.

There's nothing particularly traumatic going on right now to distract me.

There's so much misery in the world... so much senseless violence, so much death... so much joy, so much love, so much hate... so many lives...

It's tempting to say this (war, hatred) is wrong, and that is right... That the world just needs more love, or that we need to kill everyone who is wrong, or whichever. I think, though, that it's really all how it's supposed to be. There is nothing that happens that cannot be learned from. There's nothing that could happen. What is life but learning?

It's tempting, then, to chalk it up to fate. To sit by and let things move how they will. And that would be totally within the rules and bounds of the universe. No-one is screwing it all up by leaving it to fate. But change happens. People make change. If people all left it to fate, there would be no change. There is nothing, though, to prove that the faithless are outside fate. The world needs observers, and the world needs those who act. This isn't an abstract moralization. It is true, because it is what is, and who are we to say that we are above fate, that we are the ones to screw it up? Our differences and disagreements are because they are meant to be. Such is the world.

The universe, whatever your politics, works. The Earth has survived, animals, plants, fungus, and humanity has survived for eons, and if they don't work, they don't survive. If we sow our own destruction, we will be destroyed, and it will be right. If we live in "harmony" (?) with nature, we will not... theoretically. And this will be right. Whatever happens, whatever thoughts surface, whatever pain there is in this world, was meant to happen. Changes of life paths, too, are meant to happen. Rot of the personality too. And death. And miracles. There is so much in the world, and it's all meant to be.

It is meant to be. And we are also meant to fight against what we were meant to term injustice. And those who oppose progress are meant to do so, and those who change their minds are as well.

Fate cannot be understood.

Fate encompasses all. Any understanding of fate that you think you have, that's also fated. No matter how deep you look, no matter how hard you try to find the meaning of it all, you won't actually ever make it to the bottom of the well. The nature of fate always pulls back another level, just as science or religion have in the past and present (No matter how many levels of "the basest material" man has discovered, this basest material has been made up of other, baser, parts). People live and die, and it's meant to be, and people introspect, and people discover, and people try to discern the meaning of life, and whether they succeed or not, it is meant to be, and it is within the rules and bounds of the universe, and that's okay. The asymptote of human knowledge is infinity. We get closer and closer and closer to the truth, but there is always another halfway point, and we never get to the bottom of the well. If knowledge reached the "x = 0" point, the asymptote, knowledge would cease to exist, and it would be infinite. There can be no complete and total knowledge of the universe, and such knowledge would destroy itself, for as much is as meant to be, that conclusion is meant to be as well. Life is a game of wits. Try to see how many iterations of everything you can get through before you lose your footing. If you get through enough you get to be a scientist, or a theologian.

The human existence is based on limits, on stops and starts, on tangible endpoints. We're born, we're die. We argue about the start of life (abortion) and the end of life (vegetables) and exactly what counts as life in the first place. There is no "what is, is" in human existence. We always are trying to impose a limit on that which has none. Fate is unlimited. Thus humans will never understand it. We operate on a plane of limits. True knowledge of fate is the one (?) thing that we will never attain, and it is the one thing that could change us or destroy us in the most extreme way imaginable, plus.

All this is useless. You can't apply "everything is life is is is right" to live a long, healthy, prosperous life. And whether you believe it or not, that is the goals we have established for ourselves, and as there can be no universally satisfying goal, one may well be as good as another. It's all a hand in the game of life, and it's an experiment, just to see what it's like, to see how far you're willing to go down the rabbit hole. The game never ends, though. You can't lose, and you can't win. You can stop playing, but someone forgot to define forfeits in the rulebook, your gamepiece just sits there, waiting to be defined, waiting to be validated.

There is no comfort in infinity. The "God is watching over you" of religion is such a shallow level of the well. In the infinity of the universe, a bubble of God has been established around the Earth. God is infinite, but so much is left to God.

I don't think there is a God, really.

The context of God is real. God is established, I believe, to calm the turbulence of infinity. To give people a real endpoint, to say "God is all" and leave it at that. But I don't see an ever-expanding fractal of existence ending in one omnipotent point. I see it expanding ever outward, forever.

All is life. Life is. Is is right.

There's so much misery in the world... so much senseless violence, so much death... so much joy, so much love, so much hate... so many lives...

All is.

It's terrifying, and calming.
It's senseless, but completely reasonable.
It's ugly.
Its beauty is boundless, beyond anything we could create out of our world of limits.

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What? What's this? A post?

Behold.

The title is how long since I've last posted, in case you didn't get that.

Kind of like in Donnie Darko but without the 80s music and the rabbit.

I'm not making any sort of commitment with this... I might start blogging again, I might not. We'll just see what happens. I don't know myself.

So. Obviously. It's my senior year, and it has been for some time. The musical was Kiss Me Kate. We did one show... weather problems. My senior project is over. So is my senior paper. Neither is worth discussing here.

I'm in a band now. Sort of. With music. Kind of. I sing a song, badly... most of it is instrumental, because we can't exactly be bothered to sing most of the time. And there's no myspace, or upcoming gigs or anything... Also because we can't be bothered. Hence "sort of" in a band.

It's called "The Something." It was an inside joke. Now it's just getting old. I can't decide how I feel about it.

It's been an eventful year, month, twenty-one days, four hours and twenty-seven minutes. There's the school stuff that's happened.... My grandmother died.... band stuff.... found good new music (The Mars Volta, Dresden Dolls (not new as much as rediscovered, I've mentioned them here before I think), Muse, The Shins (I was pretty late on that bandwagon, I admit), Regina Spektor... etc).... Drama Club President (woo-hoo.).... Cousin moved in.... Cousin moved out.... Went to Scotland.... Made the decision to take AP Economics (a life altering experience, naturally).... basically a load of stuff that I can't really be bothered to recount in detail. I can hear your cries of despair, and I'm sorry.

As you can see, I've still got the really bad sarcasm thing.

Anyway, on to the present.

I'm on spring break, which was, of course, badly needed. The musical was fun, kinda, though (as I said) we only did one show. It snowed. I was the Assistant Director. Stress, stress, stress. I hosted the cast party.

I'm going to Indiana University in the fall... Majoring in Theatre and Drama / Computer Science. Supposedly.

Hmm. I probably won't get back into this habit.

Oh well. It was worth a shot.


........


I thought I was done. Then I got to thinking, you know, I haven't actually said anything worth saying, or anything that you couldn't have gotten by asking any one of my relatives or acquaintances. So I'll take another stab.

I've been reading the Dresden Dolls Diary blog (linked).
Blogging is not about sharing things that you're obligated to share and stopping. It's about sharing your deeper thoughts and emotions, so that someone might actually get to know you better, or at the very least you feel lighter yourself.

That's what I always forget. I get into the habit (cough) of just writing out what I feel like I should tell people (people? Bah. No-one reads this, especially not after 1+ years of complete stagnation).

So more about that band stuff.

Yeah, I write music now. I might have written a little bit before, in This Blog version 1.0... Mostly lyrics, probably, if I remember correctly. Bad lyrics. Lyrics about love and loss when I was too young to know the meaning of either. Rearrangement of the tried and true, Oh Baby this and Depths Of Despair that. Now I write actual music.

Wait, time out. I don't write actual music. I write simple four-chord progressions on the piano with bullshit improvised melodies in the right hand, occasionally stuttering out a word or two about life in general or my experiences with relationships. But the point is, I write music now, rather than cut and paste music.

I'm getting the urge to do another self-deprecatory time-out, but I won't. It's okay. Nobody reads this.

.....

Anyway.

I write music. My bandmates (James and Eric) write music as well. We meet up, sit around, drink tea (nothing funny!) (except for Eric, he's Mormon. He drinks root beer), and write music. Occasionally we remember some of it, because sometimes it doesn't suck. Some people tell us we're good (those who actually hear us, we don't really do shows... some people just hear a few songs we've recorded). The state of the band is, however, uncertain. I am a Senior, James is a Junior, Eric is a Sophomore. Once college gets into the mix... Well, that all remains to be seen.

The point is (again), I write music. Well, that again is a lie. Most of the time I don't write it down. I usually just make new stuff up every time. But I play music that has at some point or another come forth out of my own creativity.

And sometimes Chopin.



I bought The Mars Volta CD (Bedlam in Goliath) with the money I made from watching James' pets over the weekend. It is awesome. I listened to it, and nothing else sounded like music for a day.



I've been reading "insightful" books lately. On The Road (Kerouac), Oracle Night (Paul Auster)... those are the two really worth mentioning, though The Plague (Camus) is also a good one. I gave up on the fantasy novels for the most part. All of these are highly recommended.



I was reading back through my old blog posts, just to see whether there was actually anything going on in my fifteen-year-old head. In the last actually meaningful post, I mentioned the need for superiority--How I (think that I) flaunt my "intellectual"-ness sometimes, or feel compelled to, anyway, so I can feel like I've got one up on everyone else. Wow, it sounds so shitty when I type it out like that. Anyway, the point is, I was caught off guard. Normally when I read through old posts (or journal entries, depending on the age), I find Myself-In-The-Past grappling with all sorts of issues that I-Now had no trouble with, and barely even remember. The superiority thing is not like that, though. Apparently, it's an ongoing thing. As I said then, it is human nature to want to be better than everyone else. But I don't really want to write it off as human nature so quickly. Human nature or not, I do want to try to fix the things about myself that really bother me.

And why am I typing this out? Honestly, part of me thinks it's to prove to people that I have these thoughts, and that I am in fact "better." But if it was about people reading it, and thinking "Oh, that Patrick, he's so deep," I wouldn't be posting it on my Blogspot-Which-Has-Been-Vacant-For-A-Year to be imported into a Facebook-Which-I-Haven't-Been-On-In-Months Note-Which-No-One-Will-Bother-To-Read-Anyway. I would be writing it out in my 89 cent Psych notebook, flashing the four packed-solid pages of incoherent scribblings and saying something to the effect of "I got pissed today and needed to vent" or "Look, I had so many ideas that my head was just about to explode" or "Aren't I insightful?"

...

I do that too.

...

I stayed up until 1:20 last night playing Guitar Hero for about 4 solid hours. My fingers kind of hurt after a while, but not enough to stop. It was less an addiction to the game, and more just not going to bed. Sometimes I get the urge to do mildly self-destructive things like that, and stay up just so I will be tired in the morning... which doesn't work on break, for future reference. But essentially, I was sitting there, totally fucking up the songs but apathetic, thinking about stuff. My grandparents (from Scotland) dropped in last night, and we were updated on the status of my infamous cousin. Anyone reading this will doubtless have heard the story, as I tend to overtell it in my solid-world, day-to-day experience. Essentially, things have taken a turn for the worse again... about as they were some months ago. She's no longer "doing better." I don't need to elaborate any further in this forum. But she was a huge part of my thoughts during my Guitar Hero marathon. I also thought about my self, like I explained in the last few paragraphs.

...

I finished the Career on Easy mode, which was boring. I got halfway through on Medium before I finally decided to pack it in. I also played When We Were Young on Hard, but that hardly counts... Just a bunch of repeated notes interspersed with random hard bits that mercifully don't last long enough to do any actual damage to your score.

...

I think I want some tea. Bigelow Earl Grey. Buy it. It's amazing.

...

I know... I'll tag people. That'll get them to read this, on Facebook anyway. Hahaha.

...

Back to the personal struggles. The superiority thing... I've honestly got no idea. I'll let it stew for a minute.

As you know, I write music. Oh, tea.

...

(water was boiling)
Until recently, I had been trying to write music. This was unsuccessful.

** aside--apart from flinging around the intellectualness, I also tend to do it with vocabulary. Where exactly is the line there? What counts as a good word, and what counts as annoying? **

I was trying very hard. I was taking lessons, which, now that I've quit, I think were part of the problem. I was sticking too hard to the theory, and the theory (which was minimal, actually) was bogging down the creativity. So, I quit lessons. Problem solved, except not really. Then, I was bogged down by Chopin. I was looking too hard at classical, or at massively complicated popular/modern, and thinking "I can't write that. How can I ever write that?", and trying anyway, and failing miserably, and then beating myself up over it, and being just generally very disagreeable. And, to my GREAT frustration, the best songs I had were the ridiculously simple ones. Grrrr.

So, along comes dresdendollsdiary. I've tried to find the post again, but alas, it is nowhere. Essentially, it was Amanda Palmer saying "it's not about what music is, but what music does. If the goal is best accomplished simply, let it be simple." The words were nothing like this, but the point was somewhere in that general area. And suddenly, I'm improvising like there's no tomorrow. I sit down at a piano, play for three minutes, and it's good, or good enough for being made up on the spot, and I don't write it down, I forget it. And it's no big loss, because I'll come up with a hundred more that week. They're simple, they're worthless, and I feel uncomfortable writing them down because if I write it down, suddenly it's a song, and it's a stupid, simple song at that, with a rolling-chord C A G F progression and Oh My God, how did I even write that?!

But if I just play it, and forget it, I don't have to live with the simplicity, or live with the fact that people can play it after watching my hands for twenty seconds, or live with the feelings of worthlessness and impotence when I just keep writing the same song in different keys. Because I'm just expressing myself, I'm just getting emotions out to get them out and I'm not grasping at straws, trying to hold on to them so that I can bring them out at parties. Life as a musician is so much easier this way.

Yet another reason why I'm "sort of" in a band. I can't bother to remember the songs.

...

This post is longer than normal. And I know why, and it's stupid. It's longer because Dresden Dolls Diary posts are long and I like them, so I can pull off long posts too.

Jeez, I'm pathetic.

Ugh.

Just... ugh.

I took the SAT yesterday... I think I did well, but man it's exhausting. Then I went to bloomington with Kaisha & Kyle, and we went to Borders and Panera Bread. Went back to Kyle's house, lounged around, went to Kaisha's house, had iced tea, went home. And today, I have to rewrite two scenes and write an entirely new one for Ms. Runge, and write a "mini-theme" for English. Is a day off every once in a while too much to ask?

The first Show Choir Competition is in 6 days. We kind of suck. I'm not terribly confident. But I don't really want to get too in to that.

Trying to decide what to do about piano tomorrow. I could leave rehearsal about 15 minutes early to go, or I could cancel it... I haven't exactly done everything I'm supposed to do for it, so I might cancel it... Tuesday marks 1 year I've been taking piano. Woohoo.

East Drama has been asked to audition to go to Scotland in 2008. Spiffy. We'll see how that works out.

Meh. I guess I should get writing.

Life is exciting... Sort of.

Sooo.

Things are a bit less stressful at the moment. I finished Grapes of Wrath and all related assignments, we're watching the movie (which kind of sucks) in class, which is good only because it's harder to assign homework for.

The back-to-school homework frenzy has died down a bit, which helps alleviate much of the stress I felt on Tuesday.

Monday, which is MLK day and thus a three-day weekend, is irrationally busy. I have to get up at like 6.15 (so not fair!) and go to work on staff, which lasts until about 10.30. THen I go to rehearsal for Guys and Dolls at 1.30 for 2 hours, come home again, go to piano at 5.30, go to show choir rehearsal at 6 and come home at 8.15. Bah.

I've started my latest art project... we're doing plaster carvings. I've made steady progress with the file, so I'm happy with that.

I needed a writing sample for Ms. Runge for Playwriting, and because I didn't really have anything appropriate & recent, I just started another one. Apparently I can come up with two pages of prologue and a half-page full of premise and plot from the word "dark." I guess that's cool.

Hell, I've written enough. Don't feel like it anymore.

The return of the photoblog

I got a spiffy new camera for christmas. So, behold. Spiffy new artworks.








Ok, so they're all photoshopped, but they look kind of cool that way.

Check Deviantart and Photography-Obsessive for others.

New Blogger???

So, it seems the blogger beta is no longer beta.

So what does this mean for me?

It means too fucking complicated to try to replicate the old site... so it's time for a redesign. Woo hoo.

I'm satisfied with it. I even made a new banner. It was interesting trying to get the text title not to show up, but I got it to work.

Now, after all that meaningless nonsense I'm sure you're wondering whether anything interesting is happening in my life at the moment.

Well...

I auditioned for Guys and Dolls. I got "Arvide Abernethy," who is Irish and has a solo song and whatnot. I am off stage enough that tech should be an option some days, so this is good.
Christmas came and went, and I got a new camera. So I now have a digital camera that actually takes pictures worth sharing. I also got Medieval II: Total War for PC, which basically just provides yet another way to distract me from Grapes of Wrath, which I would be reading if I was responsible. Speaking of reading, I went to Barnes and Noble in Bloomington today, got a book called Vellum, by some author guy, and it seems interesting. I will probably be reading it instead of Grapes of Wrath this next week, along with watching That 70s Show DVDs and playing computer games. It's almost as if the universe is conspiring to keep me away from John Steinbeck Books. Well, universe, I appreciate the thought, but I'm really going to have a problem come January 10th when I'm due to have it finished and I haven't read but 3 chapters. Thanks a lot Total War, thanks a lot That 70s Show, thanks a lot Barnes and Noble. Sigh.

I've had several bursts of creativity of the musical nature lately... I've written several short and crappy piano songs, a couple of which I can actually play.

Lo and Behold, I am now Tired of Blogging. See you in a month.

Titles require thought

So, my homework was done at a pleasant 9:00... and I figured I'd give myself an hour of whatever before heading to bed so I can kick the rest of whatever-sickness-I-have to the curb... So, what better to do than blog? Right? Right.

So, I guess I could do a class roundup, considering how long it's been.

1. Japanese--Actually spoke Japanese. Seems obvious, but we actually do very little of that this year... It frustrates me sometimes. Too many good quotes over the months in that class to remember any of them.

2. US History. All I remember is writing, writing, and more writing. I spent about 2 1/2 hours regurgitating an "American Heritage" article last night, then I had to regurgitate it again in class, and take 2 pages of rapid-fire notes on some Roosevelt filmstrip. Not good on a day with lack of sleep.

3. Physics -- Basically sucked... Mr K has the annoying habit of using sports analogies constantly... So the calculator is our "physics shoes," he's our coach, and the test is "the big game."

Yeah. Pretty stupid if you ask me.

4. Algebra II -- Same old same old. Math. woot.

5. English -- So, we're dividing chapters between groups in the class so that Mrs. V doesn't have to explain everything. Apparently she's tired of talking (which, coincedentally, is her job, but hey), so she's having us explain chapters of The Scarlet Letter to the class. We got chapter 17. We're doing a dramatic re-enactment. We'll see how that goes.

Lunch -- I was pretty exhausted by lunch. The unidentified sickness killed my appetite, so I had 4 chicken nuggets, OJ from a can, Ritz bitz and like 8 fruit snacks. As far as the social part of lunch... nothing monumental happened.

6. Show Choir -- So, the 50-page christmas medley is officially dead. Mr. H stopped playing the accompaniment mid-phrase, made a face, and said "I know we've been working on this for forever, but would you mind terribly if we sang something else?" The class erupted in enthusiasm. So no more" Christmas Garland." We are now singing a soul-ridden "Hallelujiah." It'll be cool enough.

On another note, there was a joint effort of show choir and drama today to list all 150 original pokemon from memory. I am proud to say we were successful, though it took about 2 hours. We also remembered all the trainers and the cities to which they belong.

7. I was pretty much just sitting there being quiet... remembering pokemon and cities and such...

8. Second to last day on the Potter's wheel... I would've liked to make something other than bowls, like maybe a nice vase, but considering the mood of the bowl I did make today, I'm lucky that even lived...

Stayed after to aim lights and that sort of thing. There are still a couple of stupid places that are badly lit, but for the most part it turned out ok. Plus I get paid for being there.

Got a haircut... not screwed up, woot. Bought gum. Did homework. Yeah, that's my day.

Ongaku post

It's been a few months...

Captured in Chinatown -- The best band ever to only get 10 plays a day. The instrumentals are creative... just all around cool. Don't feel like analyzing right now, what can I say.

Emery -- A bit more hard-rocky than I usually post here, but hey.

Annuals -- Interesting. Very interesting.

Boys Like Girls -- Nothing that different, but hey, I can appreciate a good emo band as much as anyone.

I'm kinda glad I can't vote.

So, here's a post about the much-publicized Hill-Sodrel race for Indiana District 9.

I don't like Hill's economics.

I don't like Sodrel on social issues.

So Libertarian Eric Schansberg seems the logical choice... but I'm not so fond of him on the war.

So then, what are my priorities?

I'm an angsty, repressed teenagers, so social issues are big.

But then the idea of millions of dead Iraqis doesn't sound so great, which seems the likely result of pulling out quickly...

And it doesn't help that all Hill and Sodrel do is sling mud at each other. I haven't seen a single positive ad in the whole campaign season. All they do is bash each other, and I don't support that, and whatever the issues, I don't want to condone that bullcrap.

So I would probably end up not voting anyway.

Busy, busy, busy

Maybe happiness is being too busy to realize you're sad.

Well, I am, anyway. I'm in the play at East, Anatomy of Gray (come see it!), for which I have rehearsal *almost* every day... the days I don't have rehearsal for Anatomy I have rehearsal for Anne Frank, the scene we are putting on for the middle school students... and then every day at 7 for the next few weeks, I'm at rehearsals for Grace and Glorie, doing whatever I'm told in order to ingratiate (vocab word!) myself with the theaterical community...
Plus, I have to keep tabs on the progress of the poster for Anatomy, work for 12 hours on saturday, and somehow find time to do homework.

Being sad doesn't really fit in there.
I've wasted a good half-hour on the computer. I have to leave in 1:15. I'd better get cracking on that homework.

The title would be "Falling Apart" if I was the type for the excessively dramatic

So, really, it's not as bad as all that... I just feel like I'm gradually going crazier...

I can't really form coherent sentences at the moment... partly from the techno blasting in the headphones... partly the weird state of mind...

I don't really know what to say. I really don't....

Eventually, I'll probably write a big rambling post on the subject of... all this crap... but I can't right now, literally cannot think that clearly. So I'll leave it at a cryptic message implying intense emotional stress thousands of times more serious than it really is... It's really not that bad... I'm just blowing things out of proportion... it's what I do...

Not sad

I feel like blogging. I don't really have anything to blog about, but I have resolved that it's not going to be some big philosophical moment. I'm sick of philosophy.

I went to wal-mart twice today. >_> Heh.

I'm actually going trick-or-treating this year. Yeah, I'm 16, whatever, I don't care, because my costume rocks. It's a secret, though.

I downloaded "Blank Screens" by "The Static Age" off Itunes. I've mentioned them before... but I'll mention again. It's really good, but all the songs kind of sound alike. So it's the kind of CD you want to just leave in your car, instead of listening to it end to end... but yeah, whatever.

I went to "Music of the Night" last night... it was a show from the Columbus Theater Company... it was good. A bunch of songs from broadway musicals... good fun. Some damn good singers, too.

Sigh. I have the feeling that I have some big piece of homework to do over the weekend... but I don't really remember what it is...
Wait... yes I do. Sigh.

Eeeeeh.