So a while ago Atmosphere announced their next tour. It seems to be a co-headlining tour with Slightly Stoopid. I had no idea who or what that is, so I've been slightly apathetic about it. As well as moderately curious who this could be. I assumed it was some newly popular rapper/rap group that I hadn't heard of yet cause I'm old(ish) and kinda don't care about trendy, social media broken rap (which for whatever reason I assumed it was, maybe the name). I figured eventually the information would be made plain to me.
Tonight, while doing my usual stalling going to bed I decided to finally check it out. Turns out they're basically a Sublime type band. Zzzzzzz. So I'm thinking I probably won't go when they come through town.
Which would make it the third time in a row (at least) that I've missed Atmosphere. There was a time when this would have been unthinkable.
This realization that it has been so long since I've seen them led to a lightning fast recollection, which is also the impetus of this post.
I immediately had a rush of specific memories from the last show I went to. The feelings I had during their set. The places I stood. The temperature of the room.
And who I went with.
And how that made me feel the whole night.
And now I'm wondering if somehow, subconsciously, that is why I haven't seen them since. It just can't be matched. Or I don't want it to be matched. Or I don't want to go alone.
I have had legitimate reasons not to attend every time since then. But perhaps that's just the smoke and mirrors I've made to shield myself from the possible poking of a flesh wound.
Probably I'm just over analyzing right now.
But it's an interesting thought either way.
Unrelated other thing from tonight:
I watched the new Macklemore video and thought, "Man, I rap so much better than him." That ushered in plenty of its own conflicting emotions.
Sometimes you just wanna be picked up by the zeitgeist. Even if its just locally. And for a short time. Sometimes other people's opinions matter more than they should. Sometimes being acknowledged feels important.
Sometimes you realize that one year ago today you were playing a fun show for a room full of strangers at the Bowery Ballroom and they liked you and a former writer for Spin loved your set and you realize that maybe that's as good as it will ever get and that at one time you were more than okay with that but tonight it makes you kind of sad because where do you go now?
one million seven hundred eighteen thousand three hundred and fifty two
thoughts in my mind
that I can't seem to say, write, type, draw or illuminate.
and it's always after the good nights that they seem to swarm.
maybe they know these are the only nights they won't crush me.
ugh. sometimes i get annoyed even feeling the need to post this sort of thing.
but, hey, i got some new shoes today. so how bad can it really be?
"worse things have happened to better people / that's the mantra"
- P.O.S
Need suggestions
So a little while ago I finally got around to getting a new library card and getting some books from the library. I am quite enjoying getting back into more regular reading, as you may have noticed. I had forgotten how it helps funnel my thoughts and overactive mind into slightly more productive avenues.
For lack of a better term I am wanting to start doing some "research" for the follow up to Do Yourself In with some extensive reading (and possibly movie/tv show watching). Right now the concept is a bit shadowy and dark (surprise surprise, right?). No need to try and explain as its incomplete and, at this current moment, irrelevant. Anyway, point being...
I am looking for some reading recommendations.
Specifically, things dealing with death, depression, anxiety, madness, melancholy, ennui, insanity, futility, foolishness, hopelessness, aging, entropy, etc. Work that directly or subtly evoke those feelings/moods. I think you probably get the point.
It can be fiction or nonfiction. Classic or contemporary. Novel, short story, poem, scientific article, personal essay, journalistic feature, whatever. Probably a little of everything would be good.
I feel like the most helpful right now would be stuff that isn't super dry and academic. Something leaning a little more literary and romantic and, dare I say, lyrical (by which I don't mean actual lyrics, but those could probably help too).
But I do want academic type stuff also. Ugh.
I mean, really just whatever cause I'm gonna pick and choose what I want anyway.
So, if you've read this far... What have you got?
I guess I should probably read Hamlet.
quotes
"YOU ARE HUMAN!
YOU ARE FALLIBLE!
YOU WILL ENJOY LIFE MUCH MORE IF YOU ACCEPT - NO,
EMBRACE - THE FACT THAT THERE IS NO SUCH THING AS A GOOD DECISION AND A BAD DECISION.
THERE ARE ONLY
DECISIONS.
MAKE THEM, FUCK UP, ENJOY, REPEAT."
Monkey Mind: A Memoir of Anxiety
by Daniel Smith
page 180
hardcover edition published by Simon & Schuster, 2012
quotes
"I'd reached that point that comes in the life of most anxiety sufferers when, fed up by the constant waking torture, dejected and buckled but not yet crushed, they at last turn to their anxiety, to themselves, and say, "Listen here: Fuck you. Fuck you! I am sick and fucking tired of this bullshit. I refuse to let you win. I am not going to take it anymore. Your are ruining my fucking life and you MUST FUCKING DIE!
Unfortunately, this approach rarely solves the problem. Anxiety doesn't bend to absolutism. You have to take a subtler, more reasoned approach. But that doesn't mean anger is totally unhelpful. Being pissed off is a strong cocktail for the will... Anger breeds defiance, and defiance is inspiriting."
Monkey Mind: A Memoir of Anxiety
by Daniel Smith
page 169, second and third paragraphs
hardcover edition published by Simon & Schuster, 2012
"On a trip to New York... I met a girl, and the immediate and mutual attraction between us went a long way toward quieting my mind. It redirected my attention from myself to someone else, from my hatred of my nature to my affection for someone else's, from despair and demoralization to excitement and anticipation. Of course, feeling soothed by love turned out to be as temporary and full of folly as feeling soothed by authority turned out to be... No one can do the work but yourself. But both were nice while they lasted."
Monkey Mind: A Memoir of Anxiety
by Daniel Smith
page 173, second paragraph
hardcover edition published by Simon & Schuster, 2012
Personal note: I think this is one of the more dangerous traps I allow myself to fall into. No matter how clear it is that the train is coming, damned if you don't feel sure you can stop it dead in its tracks this time.
Tired of these yet?
Only 60 or so pages left in this book.
But they'll probably keep coming.
Just a warning to all three of you.
quotes
"That was the most plausible answer to the question I wanted answered - not just "What am I doing here?" but the exponentially more consequential "What's wrong with me?" What defect was responsible for this terrible anxiety?
What defect? How about being a weakling? How about being a pushover? How about being shamefully, contemptibly, pathetically, unreservedly acquiescent to the wills of others? How about being so weak of will that you may as well not even have one?
It fit, this explanation... At moments of decision I treated my intuition in the opposite way everyone treated theirs, not as a handy volitional dispatch from the characterological depths but as a suspicious, mercurial, dubious voice from the same, mired in the chaos of existence and so best to be discounted in favor of more objective-seeming data - namely, other people's opinions. I shut my eyes, held out my hands, and asked other people to lead me. What else could I be but anxious?"
Monkey Mind: A Memoir of Anxiety
by Daniel Smith
pages 140-141
hardcover edition published by Simon & Schuster, 2012
quotes
"Whenever a person is faced in life with a choice, his whole being trembles with the dilemma of what to do. It trembles because, being human, he wants both things but can't have both; because deciding always means being altered; and because alteration, however desirable, is always violent. Anxiety is the stage a person has to pass through on his way to creating himself."
Monkey Mind: A Memoir of Anxiety
by Daniel Smith
page 89, first paragraph
hardcover edition published by Simon & Schuster, 2012
quotes
"In this powerful new state, in which memory and disgust banded together like some neurological death squad to hack apart serenity, there was, as in the most paralyzing cases of schizophrenia, nothing in the world that did not speak to my anguish. Everything was a malignant reference to what I wished had not happened and to the way I now felt. Everything was mockery."
Monkey Mind: A Memoir of Anxiety
by Daniel Smith
page 69, second paragraph
hardcover edition published by Simon & Schuster, 2012
quotes
"She didn't win; no one wins. It was more like she struck a bargain. The bargain was this: Admit the anxiety as an essential part of yourself and in exchange that anxiety will be converted into energy, unstable but manageable.
Stop with the self-flagellating and become yourself, with scars and tics."
Monkey Mind: A Memoir of Anxiety
by Daniel Smith
page 31, second paragraph, emphasis added
hardcover edition published by Simon & Shuster, 2012
There used to be a time when I longed for things. Experiences, knowledge, talents, accomplishments, love, community, companionship, pride, self confidence, some sort of sense of completion.
Lately I feel like I no longer expect any of those things. They exist for other people at most. I will, at best, know them tangentially, as one experiences the lives of characters in novels.
At times there is nothing more absurd than the assertion that I deserve these things. Much less the idea that I will receive them.
And I don't know if that's growing up.
Or giving up.
Maybe they're the same thing.
"You didn't get mature, you got tame / they ain't the same"
- P.O.S
"Been failing for years and call yourselves vets, that's bold / Motherfucker, you're not a vet, you're just old"
- El-P
