Pretty swell(ed)

Been pretty busy for awhile now, and the most evident sign of this is the list of people I've been trying to catch up with for some time, and how long it's taking. I guess this is at least partly an attempt to catch up, from my end. In early March I started a new job....

The week after brought on the SXSW Festival, a big music and film shindig in Austin. Last year I posted three blog entries about it. This year I saw no films and since I was working, didn't make it to any of the hallowed free day parties, until Saturday. But I was able to get out to free shows almost every night, and then go home to attempt the overwhelming task of planning the following night. Slept 20 hours in the first five nights, and it was a bit rough, but manageable, as always. Saw Shannon and the Clams (excellent '60s style rock and soul), the Rubies (crazy garage rock from Japan), Off With Their Heads (awesome "contemporary" punk), Andrew W.K. ("When it's time to party, we will party hard"), and Mariachi El Bronx, which is hardcore punk band The Bronx's mariachi incarnation, with full regalia and instrumentation. Holy shit, that was something. It ended late Saturday night with Eric and I sneaking into a parking garage for the Vice after-party, drinking Mexican beer on an escalator.

Then I got sick. My Skee-ball teammate Sarah diagnosed it as South By SARS, which was going around at the time. Then Mom, aunt Marion, and cousin Dan came to visit. They hit the town hard during the day, and we had wonderful times at night, punctuated, of course, by good eats. Most notable was Buenos Aires Cafe on the East Side, where I had Milanesa a la Napolitana. That's breaded beef cutlets "blanketed" with ham, mozzarella, and homemade marinara sauce. Those Argentines know how to eat. We also hit the Texas State History Museum, the Museum of Weird, and the recently-renovated (but still rocking) Cathedral of Junk, before the family left on Monday.

Then Tuesday I had a nasty ache in the gums, and woke up the following day with an excessively swollen cheek. It was up to the eye by Thursday. Turns out I had an abscess, and will have to get a root canal. Bummer. Got some antibiotics for the swelling, and some hydrocodone for the pain, and went to the library to get Thomas De Quincey's Confessions of an English Opium Eater, to prepare myself for feverish and delirious drug-induced dreams....

And all this time, although busy, I'm thinking about things. Too much. Thinking about what seems good, what seems bad, the past, the future, and how they all relate to each other. When I'm caught up in the evaluation of the moment, I forget about the moment itself, and that life is made up of infinite moments, spanning the spectrum of emotions, consciousnesses, directions, and physical sensations - like the pain of aching gums. And like an abscess, these life-measurements some times swell. And then you take antibiotics and hydrocodone, become drowsy, and fall asleep. And wake up the next fucking day. The swelling goes down. Oral metaphors can be drawn out forever; I'll switch references to The Big Lebowski: "Oh, you know... strikes and gutters, ups and downs." And when you think about the totality of this life, all the ups and downs, how much effort can you put into the evaluation of one moment, when another one is already here?

Now, on the flipside, this oscillatory view of life is not an excuse to not strive for more authenticity, for more of the qualitative in each moment. In fact, they go hand in hand: try to achieve the qualitative in every moment, and don't worry too much about the outcome. Maybe it's idealistic, but what would the diagnosis be without the drugs?

Twinkle, twinkle

Spending all day spacing out in front of a computer inevitably brings on introspection (as well as boredom, fantasy, and delirium). Between spurts of "official" work, I fill pages and pages with ideas about my life, about your life, about our relationship to the Spectacle, about transcendence, about all kinds of shit.... But at the end of the day, these ideas rarely find the urge to jump back into a computer. Introspection transforms into reflection....

Yeah, I occasionally re-read the stuff I write on here. Even more occasionally, I talk about it with others. Think I should clarify a bit the last post ("Strawberry Shortcake..."). The Vaneigem quote is completely accurate, but can also be read out of context (as can everything). Place more emphasis on "We have a common project" than on "They must use me to save themselves just as I use them to save myself." There are two factors working here: my own subjectivity, and its connection to others. They must work together, but - what I'm taking most to heart in all this is - how can I connect to something in others that I haven't developed within myself? The point is: don't depend on others for an authentic connection... work with them to cultivate it together.

Blah blah blah... where does this subjectivity start? I'll bring up Henry Miller again too: he let go - in the most complete and sincere sense of the phrase - of everything, and moved to Paris to actually live the life of the starving artist. And it worked. Just tonight, I was talking to Nate on the phone, and we were batting around cool, potential places to live. Portland, San Francisco, New Orleans, Orlando... sure, it worked for Miller, but for me, I know it would just be a crutch - a mirage that deflects from the innards, the guts of the subject: my subjectivity.

So I go back to this... the writing that articulates these ideas, the reading that encourages the thoughts in the first place, the wandering that concretizes the thoughts in action, and yes, the people that cultivate the thoughts together with me. The Sunday post-SXSW, after breakfast, Tania and I decided to hit the East Side. No plan, but certainly a feeling. Off the bus, across the highway, murals gleam in the sun, 24 ouncers creep out of brown bags. In the cemetery, in the empty softball field, in my favorite vacant yard on Pedernales and E 5th. Like a movie - beginning, middle, and end - we cross paths with the ice cream-cart vendor, and find ourselves at a random party with music, kegs, and inflatable playpens, for the kids (I suppose). Fueled by the Marquis de Sade (we've been reading the intense Philosophy in the Bedroom as a book "group") and sweet tea vodka, we make some friends and end up at Justine's... the French bistro named, of course, after another of de Sade's tales... and with de Sade and our attractive bartenders and Cognac, the night continues, and on and on... until it's 3 in the morning. With the alarm set for 6, because we have to work. No, nothing has changed. But something has deepened, intensified... an awareness of a will to live.....

And we're back where we started. The Minutemen:

"You and me, baby. Twinkle, twinkle. Blah, blah, blah, etc."