wholehearted

http://www.ted.com/talks/brene_brown_on_vulnerability.html

In my last post I attempted to connect with you out there struggling mightily with some form of severe emotional distress: depression, anxiety, panic attacks, bi-polar, schizophrenia, addiction, to name a few.  I didn't offer any suggestions in my last post.  I purposefully did not offer any ideas for what to do because of something very true: I don't presume to know what will help lift you out of the mud.  On the other hand, in providing no resource I felt like I did not offer any support.  I know when I was in the throws of severe emotional distress, as much I hated anybody or anything that attempted to provide Advice, I desperately needed support.  So tonight, with this link, I offer a possibility, just one thing in forty billion.  However, if a video about worthiness, shame and vulnerability doesn't sound like your cup of tea, or if a video about worthiness, shame and vulnerability makes you want to vomit, by all means, leave it alone, let someone else walk down that path.

The link above takes you to a talk titled, "The Power of Vulnerability."  The gist is that human beings, bottom line, crave connection with other human beings; and allowing yourself to be vulnerable with other people actually allows you to connect more and better.  The talk is counter-intuitive and brilliant although it is unlikely to solve your problem.  It's just one stone on a path through a Japanese pond.  Of course, you may not like Koi.

with love,
Anthony

Paul Simon is not the Topic of Discussion

Paul Simon is not the Topic of Discussion.  He just released a new album.  April 11, 2011.  Beautiful day, so what.  I bought the album in Starbucks. (Take me to the stars with your green, wanderlusting, fucklebusting, neverlasting bucks, the bucks that don't pay bills.)  But Paul Simon is not the Topic of Discussion.  I want to talk about Emotion, or from Middle English, Emotione.  Emotion, the very word triggers a response: BE CAREFUL.  Don't talk about it too much, don't let those slippery emotions fall out of your stomach.  Be watchful, guarded, strong.  Flex your bicep and reject.  The whole thing needs a pentagon agency devoted to closing the door.

I was having this discussion in a taxi downtown, re-arranging my position on this friend of mine who had a little bit of a breakdown.

But I want to talk about emotion.  Emotion engulfs.  It ensnares.  It occupies, not directly, indirectly operating on your swirling mind.  How do we ease the incessant thinking?  How do we feel better?  There are many who have answers.  I guess that's all I want to say tonight.  There are many who have answers.  It's up to you to pick and choose and sort through the bullshit.  And when emotion slams down and pulverizes your brain like an anvil whipped across space and time, meshing with your frontal cortex (compassion), and leaves you near death, dazed, in a stupor, just fucking miserable, repulsed, disgusted with yourself and your life; when emotion powers the sicknesses of depression, anxiety, panic, attacks; when emotion runs out of control and leaves you a long way from wanting any fucking celebrity apprentice to magic-wand his way into your mind and fuck you with Advice.  When the sickness is so overpowering, the hospital starts to sound like a good place for an afternoon coffee, there are people who have answers.  It is up to you to sift through the bullshit and find the answers.  You probably won't want to start here.  But start somewhere.  Go out into the night of resistance and find something, one star in the night, one thing to hold on to.  And from there swing like Tarzan to the next star in the night.  Fight the instinct that it is in your DNA, that you are pre-emptively fucked from the beginning, that the sickness is real and everything else is shadow.  Go out and find one thing.  Just one thing.

with compassion,
and love,
Anthony

mephistopheles keeping me grounded

The Strokes are back in the atmosphere.  They just released a good single from their new album, Angles, which comes out on March 22nd.  They were on Saturday Night Live last weekend.  But right now I'm listening to one of their songs that was released a while ago and featured in Sophia Coppola's latest movie Somewhere.  It's a demo version of the song You Only Live Once, called I'll Try Anything Once. You can hear it here:

http://noisenarcs.com/2011/02/25/oscar-madness-nominees-film-song-2010/

Just scroll down a bit.

What if the song makes me feel sad?  What if it that feels good?  What if my life was a flying airplane with empty engines?  What if it was all beautiful?  The blazing sun: backdrop for the falling plane and the life inside.  See that's the thing.  Even when life is shitty.  It is life and it feels amazing.  Blood is literally pulsing through your veins.  You are alive in the great spectrum of mysteries.  To take one entirely insignificant example, how do my feet stay in contact with the earth as the earth travels ridiculously around the sun?  Why is there psychic  pain in my stomach?  Does the psychic pain in my stomach rotate?  Does it spin like a washing machine?  Will the clothes come out clean?  I added the Tide, so hopefully.  You can be underwater.  You can fall to the bottom of the pool, breathe out all the oxygen in your lungs, then smile and have a tea party.  And come forcefully, shooting back into the atmosphere with Mephistopheles driving the team of horses through the sky.  You just a passenger.  Sitting next to Beelzebub in the small pew of the chariot.  He's taking you to a lake.  A lake reflecting the snow-capped, jagged mountains.  Your tea party with Lucifer is calm.  He is a gentleman, a black-magic magician, cloaked and freshly shaven.  Lucifer disparages the intelligentsia.  Poor professor all alone in his words.  Satan plays badminton with the professor's words on a lawn court near the lake, in the English country side, not far from Oxford.  You and the Devil hear the stormy music coming from the College.  It keeps me down.  It keeps me from going down any further.  It keeps me and collects me and rotates me.  I like to be in love and one day have a wife with children and that white picket fence.  "And but for the sky there are no fences facing." But what does the Devil mean?  What is his significance in the modern atheist order?  to the Christian, Muslim, Buddhist, Jew?  What is his representation now?  Disorder? Hate? Evil? The Dark Lord?  But isn't that from Star Wars?  What if the Devil is simply anger and underneath that anger is sadness?  What then?  The Devil as sadness.  Do we as a society push the Devil away when we should really bring him close, and let him melt into tears.  The Satanic Verses and The Master and Margarita are two of my favorite books.  If God is Dead then is the Devil Alive? and more importantly

is that okay?

I hope you are happier.  But if you are happier, I ask you this.  Have you felt the sadness?  Have you really felt the sadness, the sadness of a loved one passing or the death of a pet or a poet or magician? One billion human movements create sadness.  The subtle, nonverbal communication from one person to another, crushing pain.  Have you felt that?

Love,
Anthony

i think you're a contra

New York City.  It's big.  The big buildings throw punches at you while you're walking down the street.  You have to avoid them, the punches.  Last time I was in New York I listened to Vampire Weekend's latest album over and over.  It's a good new york album.  Now, my life is simple.  I'm no longer in new york and maybe I miss the buildings a little.  But I'm listening to Vampire Weekend so I'm going to write a poem.  hehehe.

the salty dog grabbed the waitress
and went for broke
exchanging his coinage (pennies) for her snatch
wealth.
I can't take it! I can't take it! she cried
and tears came like watermelon seeds
and I'm a happy teddy bear.
now we sit along the wall and watch the
facebook
open and close open and close open and close
sixteen figurines and a salty roof
mansard bastard and watermelon, too.
the beat box 80's rap star's wife's girlfriend
calls me on her cell phone
"it's ee and i'm cumming!!!"
"oh shit i'll be right over!"
"don't bother.  the damage is done."
inside the moma i see a klee and a honeybee
and a klee and a payyyyyyphone.
keep me captured she calls over the wire, through the can of tomato soup
mr. brainwash original
on the wall of the pristine palace of new commodities
rage against the artwallinfectednothing
mason commercials mediated psychologists open heart
surgery
climb the pole
feel the role
roll the scroll
read the bible
open the cabinet
smoke the smell
torah time open wine modern catapult your feelings into excess away from loving tender comfort
sleeeeeeeeeeep!!!!

but gosh.  it's got to be better than this right?

that's the end of my poem.

much love,
Anthony

Swashbuckler Blues

I like this song by the Theater Fire.  There's a lyric that goes:

"So it's strange how I am my old man
despite all attempts
to be Errol Flynn"

I've been feeling a strong sensation recently to let go of all the anxiety that goes along with the pressure i put on myself to be famous.  It sounds ridiculous, but I have a complex tendency to want to produce great works of art, maybe a short story or a personal essay or a novel or a screenplay or a song or a film.  I put a lot of pressure on myself to produce such great works of art.  But the reality is I'm not prepared and haven't put in the time.  I play the guitar like a beginner and my songs are more like proto-songs.  I haven't even been playing a lot of guitar recently because I've been focused on my "day-job"and I'm so exhausted with the pressure i put on myself.  I want to let it go.  Like water flowing over my shoulders, there's so much tension in my shoulders, and lately I have felt these moments of release, and I can feel the muscles in my shoulders relax.  I crave this feeling of being relaxed.  And right now I would rather "pursue" this relaxation than try be a creative genius.  That's what I expect of myself.  With some perspective, I realize this is crazy.  With more sanity, I'm working on not working.  I mean I still have a job and I want to do it really well.  But I don't want to carry the anxiety in my shoulders.  I want to let go of that.  I put this pressure on myself to do my job really well, which is at least 8 hours monday through friday, and still have the energy to be a great musician or a great writer.  The last few days I have just wanted to let go of the expectations and the anxiety.

The lyric above captures a lot of this for me.  There are parts of my dad that i really hated as a teenager and young adult.  To accept that, in many respects, I am my father is, well -- I used to think that was the definition of giving up. A lot of self-hate.  I too want to be Errol Flynn, the swashbuckling sword fighter, movie star, handsome hero (the song is actually called Swashbuckler Blues on The Theater Fire's Matter and Light album).  It's ridiculous, but it lives inside me.  And I am glad that the Theater Fire created this song and played this song and sang this song.  In fact, the whole musical arrangement of the song comes across as simple; it just kindof moseys along.  The music reflects the lyrics.  A band member plays the xylophone, a few simple notes repeated that produces a child-like simplicity and naiveté.  One acoustic guitar plays call and response with another acoustic guitar creating a simple melody.  The music and the lyrics, they're about acceptance.  About who we really are.  It's about letting go of the expectations and just allowing yourself to appreciate what you are actually doing.  To accept that you are your father.

I have friends who are truly musically gifted.  I wouldn't shy away from saying they have a kind of genius.  One friend in particular devotes his entire being to music, and the results are wonderful.  I am not him, I'm not George Clooney, I'm not Bob Dylan, and to be honest, this kind of sucks.  But I also  don't want to give up music or writing because at times they bring me joy.  But I want to do them free of the expectations and the ridiculous hope that I will create something genius and become famous or wealthy from it.  That's hard for me.  Acceptance is like the blues, at first.  But I think over time, if you can accept who you are, the fact that you are going to be a lot more like your parents than Errol Flynn, (a whole lot of your father's nature and nurture went into making you; not so much time with or DNA from Errol, unfortunately) I think this kind of acceptance can work to your advantage. You seek out and come to projects where you can pour your soul into them for the right reasons.

Without doubt, this stuff is complicated.  There's so many schools of thought.  For example, there are those that say, "push yourself to be great; rise above the average man."  But I think, for me, that's a bit elitist (I don't claim to be completely free from elitism), and more importantly, right now, that's not where my head is at.  I want to be free from the anxiety of expectations.  I would rather live momentarily in the swashbuckler blues.  Lay down on the floor with my head looking up, breathe, and relax.

Yours, fair reader, filled with love and hope.

Anthony

Top 15 Songs of 2010

1. Stornoway – “ I Saw You Blink” – Beachcomber’s Windowsill
2. Frightened Rabbit – “Swim Until You Can’t See Land” – The Winter of Mixed Drinks
3. Vampire Weekend – “White Sky” – Contra
4. Local Natives – “Who Knows Who Cares” – Gorilla Manor
5. Sonny and the Sunsets – “ The Hypnotist” – The Hypnotist EP
6. Cee Lo – “Fuck You” – The Lady Killer
7. Arcade Fire – “Sprawl II (Mountains Beyond Mountains)” – The Suburbs
8. Stornoway – “Zorbing” – Beachcomber’s Windowsill
9. Band of Horses – “Laredo” – Infinite Arms
10. Matu – “L.A. Skies” – facebook.com/matumusic
11. The Black Keys – “She’s Long Gone” – Brothers
12. The Gaslight Anthem – “Queen of Lower Chelsea” – American Slang
13. The Tallest Man on Earth – “King of Spain” – The Wild Hunt
14. The Mantles – “Cascades” – Pink Information EP
15. The Rolling Stones – “Plundered My Soul” – Plundered My Soul Single

the saddest song in the world

I know that it is freezing
But I think we'll have to walk
I keep waving at the taxis
They keep turning their lights off
But Julie knows a party
At some actor's West Side loft
Supplies are endless in the evening
By the morning they'll be gone

When everything is lonely
I can be my own best friend
I get a coffee and the paper
Have my own conversations
With the sidewalk and the pigeons
And my window reflection
The mask I polish in the evening
By the morning looks like shit

And I know you have a heavy heart
I can feel it when we kiss
So many men stronger than me
Have thrown their backs out trying to lift it
But me, I'm not a gamble
You can count on me to split
The love I sell you in the evening
By the morning won't exist

You're looking skinny like a model
With your eyes all painted black
You just keep going to the bathroom
Always say you'll be right back
Well, it takes one to know one, kid
I think you've got it bad
But what's so easy in the evening
By the morning's such a drag

I've got a flask inside my pocket
We can share it on the train
And if you promise to stay conscious
I will try and do the same
Yeah, we might die from medication
But we sure killed all the pain
But what was normal in the evening
By the morning seems insane

And I'm not sure what the trouble was
That started all of this
The reasons all have run away
But the feeling never did
It's not something I would recommend
But it is one way to live
Cause what is simple in the moonlight
By the morning never is

It was so simple in the moonlight
Now it's so complicated
It was so simple in the moonlight
So simple in the moonlight
So simple in the moonlight

"lua"