Unstuck in space and time
It has become obvious that I'm unstuck. I'm in a perpetual state of leaving and going to all at the same time. Even while I'm sitting here writing this, I'm thinking about where these words could possibly go, and how I have to leave this job and go to another within a matter of hours.
I'm always going and leaving, which leads me to wonder which places am I leaving from and which am I coming back to. In short, there is no place that I go to where I finally "am" and that when I leave it I will eventually come back to it. I'm going off to somewhere else where I will eventually leave and then return to. All of it.
I'm realizing that the idea of coming and going is nearly irrelevant. I simply "am" wherever I am -- in one constant and permanent stream of nowness, and it's infinite, because when I inevitably die and decompose, the matter that formerly made up my skin, teeth, blood, flesh and these days mostly hair, will dissipate through the earth and the atmosphere, only to be recollected somewhere and become something else.
The point becomes to make sure that wherever I am in this moment, that I am making the best of it and not giving too much thought to what I have done or could be doing in the future. It's irrelevant, because neither of those timescapes exists. It's only what I'm doing in the moment that has any actual meaning, what I'm doing to build upon and enrich my forever current state of being.
It's always now. It always has been and it always will be.
It's infinite. Like an abyss staring into another abyss trying to make sense of it. Or, better yet, mirrors standing face to face. We're all doing this at all times, simply reflecting other people and everything, which is also reflecting itself. Infinity.
This is significant for creativity. At least it is to me in this moment. Knowing that whatever I do is a reflection of my environment and how I interact with it, and how that "image" is reflected again and again without end. The simple way to say it is that "everything is connected," which I believe to be true, but I believe that phrase is a misdirected oversimplification.
I believe that in the same way holy texts use the phrase "I am," that "We are." And it doesn't matter what happens tomorrow or in the future or after we die. Because it all will just be whatever it is, so it's ridiculous for anyone to do anything other than to just "be" and "do," since that's all there really is. Outside of that, it's all just distractions keeping us from being fully present and actually living.
My mind is so caught up in it's own constructs and endless loops that I fail to "do" more than I actually do. Even 90/10 would be an overly-generous ratio.
But enough of that. I'm approaching the precipice where my continuing to write this could begin to infringe upon "doing" and become more of a now waste. The only way, then, to be there, it to just jump into stream. And instead of letting it carry me along for a ride or, worse yet, sinking or trying to swim the other way, I'm charged with more than simply swimming with the tide: My task (or my life's purpose) is to create currents of my own.
Now and forever.
The Weeds series finale: Terrible, great and ponderings on my existence
Note: Spoilers lie ahead, if such things concern you ...
Weeds — eight long years I've been watching this show. Eight. And less than a week ago, the stash finally ran out.
I'll admit my joke was terrible, but oh so in-line with the absurd/maudlin/corny tone that Jenji Kohan's series (d)evolved into having.
Jenji (who likely will never read this), I mean you no disrespect. What you created took an level of effort and creative fortitude that I cannot yet fathom, but critics will caw and scratch none-the-less. I don't consider myself a critic, though. I believe most critics are people who attempt to tear apart creative works as an expression of their jealousy for not being able to create something themselves. Especially literary and music critics. So, no — I'm not a critic, just someone who enjoys watching my own experiences and understandings interact with various forms of content, especially within mediums that I want to use for my own work.
The finale shows life for the characters some 10 to 15 years after the previous episode. Nancy's young half-Mexican son is now a teenager (and appears to be less of a Mexican than Louis C.K.). I kept waiting for the show to pull back from the odd ghost-of-Christmas-present-esque flashforward, but it was "real."
Kohan added a few nods to the beginning by including characters we've not seen since the first few episodes, accompanied by self-aware jokes that stretched just as far.
When the series started, the general consensus was that it was fresh and unruly -- unlike anything we had seen before. But with each new change of scenery, the show jumped so many sharks that it became impossible to tell exactly where Kohan had gone wrong. Andy, the one character who seemed adamant to not become a overly-lit caricature of of himself, held on a unique and dynamic character throughout most of the series, but at the end started to shed layers of complexity until he too became overwrought and predictable. Nancy, the main character, became the worst example of this downward transformation (a negative arc).
The final episode ballooned with sentimentality. It reduced the series to near-slapstick comedy (half-Mexican son causes his bar mitzvah to implode, but still enjoys the afterparty dressed as Tony Montana).
To Kohan's credit, not all was low-brow. If you wade through the miasma of a self-aware finale, there are a few gems, my favorite being Andy encouraging a desperate and unseasonably youthful Nancy to seize her freedom and pursue her true identity. I love how she seemed to receive the exhortation as a Sisyphean sentence. He meant it to be a Promethean one. Nothing in the entire series better captured the essence of her character.
* * * * *
Like I said, I've followed the show off-and-on for about eight years. I am not sure what continued to drive this compulsion past the point where I came to hate Weeds (somewhere in the fourth season). It's probably the same thing that sparks my unwillingness to leave a party before it's absolutely dead, to not stop halfway through a novel (except Mine All Mine — sorry, Adam ... I did enjoy you in person, however) or to stay up far enough into the night to ensure tomorrow will be a rough one.
I realize this is mostly wasted time, which scares me, as I have only so many hours in me to answer some of the show's central questions:
- How am I to exist?
- Who am I?
- How am I to earn a living?
- What societal norms am I to reject?
- In what should I raise my children?
Maybe it's those same questions that drive my compulsion to keep seeking, regardless of how "right" or "wrong" the places are that I'm looking.
The trick, then, is to be able to channel this into my creative efforts, and not put on another episode of Workaholics at 1:30 a.m. on a Thursday.
A Farewell to Friends
This week marks a major shift in the Lynchburg, Va., creative community. We are losing four individuals who helped shape and evolve the artistic atmosphere here in our city — Chris and Lauren Baker, Myles Katherine and Dave Justice — to Portland, Or.
We’ll try to forgive you, Portland.
To celebrate our departing friends’ time as Lynchburg creatives, The Keep Colony hosted a multi-act concert and artisan fair on Aug. 4. There were performances by Lynchburg bands Poppa Smurf and the Last Unicorn, The Hawk and the Rumor with Victory Garden, Matthew Paul Butler and Thee Vandal Choir, and Rugby (Chris Baker’s band), and also performances by Goodwill Falcon, of Norfolk, Va., and Gull, of Philadelphia, Pa.
After pushing the limits of the local noise ordinance, we shifted the party to favorite watering hole Rivermont Pizza and finished out the night by watching one-man-band Gull play a skull bending set on guitar, vocals and drums.
As of this writing, our friends are traveling west in a caravan of vehicles stuffed with music gear, MacBooks, DSLRs, cats and whatever clothing they had space for. We bid farewell to our friends and look forward to seeing what they accomplish, but always hope for their return — even if only for a visit.
- This post first appeared on the (now defunct) website for The Keep Colony.
- Visit the site to see photos by Matthew Foster Addington and links to the performers' content.
Anthony Pisano: Regarding the discarded
I would like to share a film with you all. It is a snapshot of Anthony Pisano, an eccentric man whose East Village apartment in Manhattan looks more like an antique store than than it does living quarters. And as is mandated by the mindset of the causal stroller, individuals are wont to walk into the apartment and past Anthony, who sits out front of the apartment day and night watching people pass by.
"You can satisfy you're curiosity," Pisano tells them, "but nothing's for sale."
Perplexed, they slide further into the store/apartment and find a desk, a bed and -- if they're lucky -- a cat.
"This is my home," he says.
Mark Cersosimo and Kelsey Holtaway's short film, shot on a Canon 7D for Vimeo and their company Departure Arrival Films, shows how Pisano's home is the anti-store; a place where people walk in but cannot buy, they can take something home but no money will be exchanged. These people that walk into his "shop" bring him joy, which is evident by the deep crow's feet around his eyes, created by perpetual smiling through shared experiences.
Cerosimo describes the film as "a story of a man and his home," but it's much more than that. The film is a reminder of the importance of human interaction.
"That's important. That's life," says Pisano.
-- -- -- -- --
Header image sourced from film.
Foursquare check-in: You are now the mayor of The Island of the Misfit Toys
My 4-year-old daughter Aurelia watched the classic Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer TV special for the first time this past Christmas Eve.
Silly as it may seem, it still captures my imagination in much of the same way it did when I was her age. I’ve always identified myself with the plight of Rudolph and his irregular olfactory appendage, and Hermey the Elf’s fascination for dentistry, and how their narrative reminds me so much of not fitting in for most of my life.
As a child, my friends and siblings were all out playing sports. I could spend hours daydreaming without even noticing it. Or I would read all day. It’s not that I didn’t play sports, I just never really cared about them. And that’s a sure recipe for pariah-dom for any American male younger than 18 years old.
Even now, at a time in my life and point in our social climate when it’s cool to be weird, I still find myself somehow different than my peers. It no longer bothers me like it once did, but it’s as if whatever situation I am dropped in, certain aspects of my capital-S Self are highlighted — usually things that I had been previously unaware of, and that distance me from others.
For example, I left the popularity rat race of high school and went to college. I had thought that by going to a Christian college, I’d be able to be more myself than I did when I was embarrassed by my religion in public high school. But after four grueling years of trying to reconcile what I said I believed with what I really felt (and even then after two additional years of living as a missionary and high school teacher in Argentina), I came to understand that I don’t and never really did have true faith.
Now there exists this unseen, yet palpable divide between myself and many of the friends I had made before coming to these admissions (saying “conclusions” would be a little to final).
Among my current circle of friends, I still exist as an anomaly: a misfit among misfits. I’m married and have two kids, but can still be found at our local pizza shop/bar/music venue several nights a week. I’m into Apple products and social networking, but I have this crippling fetish for typewriters (especially my Olivetti Lettera 32). I wear vintage clothing, drive a 1980 Volvo 240 wagon and read David Foster Wallace, but tend to be passionate about things in ways that my friends might not understand (and might not be healthy).
So, I’m a perpetual misfit. Or perhaps everyone walks around with his or her own bag of paradoxes, and I’m just more tuned in to my own peculiarities than I am to those of others. However weird I may seem to myself or my peers, though, I’ve learned to embrace it — discomfort and all.
*Note: This first appeared as a much shorter version on SoulPancake (the header image source), Rainn "Dwight Schrute" Wilson's side project.