What I've Learned

In the studio all day today working on the mixes. I am bored with this album now. I am ready to move on. I have two more that I would like to complete this year. One is modern and heavy and the other a return back to a more world-music style. How we will do this I do not know, but we will make it happen.

So what else old man?
I have learned that the older we get the less afraid of things we are. Before you know it, you reach a certain age and you can’t find anything at all that you are afraid of, which can be quite disheartening. At present the only things I can still find fear of within me are being sent to prison and raped—one can only imagine the terror in that, or being stranded out at sea and being slowly nibbled to death by a band of hungry great whites while you choke and drown, a pleasant thought indeed I know. I used to be very afraid of crashing in an airplane. But I cannot seem to find that fear in me anymore. I would assume that the actual plunging to our death wouldn’t last that long and if one tried perhaps they could fool themselves into thinking they were on a ride at Disney world or something.

As a man I used to be afraid sometimes of getting beat up by bigger men (I don't think this is a fear that women usually walk around with). You study fighting and martial arts for a few years and you don't walk around with that fear anymore. I used to be afraid of my house getting broken into by a bunch of crack heads, so I bought guns and studied tactical training. Now if you hear a noise in your house while you are sleeping, you don't waddle out of bed with a baseball bat, you jump out eagerly with a .357 and pray for the souls of the men who are in there.

Its true, if you're lucky I guess, the older you get the less fear you have. And in a certain respect that means the crazier you become. Crazy people are those without fear. Like those zombie villains in video games.

Because I don't want to be crazy I am trying desperately to create some more fears in my life. I did think of some last night. Being locked in a trunk of a car would suck and someone locking you in a clothes dryer and turning it on. That would certainly be at least a little frightening. If you have children obviously I can think of nothing more frightening than something horrible happening to them. Losing your parents is something that if I focus on I can become quite afraid of. Losing a limb or becoming paralyzed is something that is easy to become afraid of if you think about it for even a few seconds.

[on a side note we’ve noticed that through the advent of technology we are gaining a lot more access to others around us who these tragedies have befallen and through getting to know them on a more personal level it increases the general understanding of these conditions and hopefully lightens the stigma and pain of it for everyone. I remember I used to be kind of freaked out by handicapped people when I was younger, but then Madelynne started working with them and bringing them around the house all the time so I got used to it. People like Christopher Reeve as horrible as it is... its doing something... its opening us all up... I can see it from the future as being something that was very important for us all...

I have learned that pornography is like anything else. it can be really gross and nasty and lower-mode. Or it can be cool and valuable. Just depends on how its done.

I have learned that just because we think of something doesn’t mean its going to happen or that its true. Our mind is like a movie theatre that we get 24 hour a day free access to, which is great. Sometimes enlightening, sometimes frightening, always entertaining. But we have to remember that after all, its just a movie; its not real.

I have learned that life is not fair. And it is not just. Bad things happen to good people all the time. and good things happen to bad people all the time. There doesn’t seem to be any justice in the machinations of this world or any divine order to our lives here. this is where the concept of heaven originated from, and why it continues. People have a tough time with how things are here. I don't blame them. I do too sometimes. I think of two people who are close to me, good friends, who suffer from alopecia; they’ve lost all the hair on their body mysteriously. Just no fucking reason or medical explanation. They just have to walk around with no hair because there is no cure for it yet. Its not fair but it’s a burden that they must endure everyday with no end in sight. Much like the girl who was just born last month with an extra head coming out of her neck. Where is there order or justice or fairness in that? if there is a God or something or someone in charge of all things one would quickly conclude that he is quite nasty and even evil, so a lot of times it feels better to conclude that there is no God at all, or that perhaps there is but he/she just doesn’t have a lot of power so that's why things like this happen all the time. One just has to think of the country of America and all the Americans that were killed in order for us to live here, and now all these foreigners, including myself, roam around this massive country calling themselves Americans when the real Americans were all killed off. Its obviously not fair. Its completely unjust and yet we all just accept it and deal with it and try not to think about it. Again, I think we have an amazing ability to fool ourselves into creating this illusion of justice and fairness in our minds, in our waking conscious minds. People try to teach their children about fairness and justice when they’re young... as if something like it exists in the world... I think that if anyone really sat down and thought about it they would just go out of their fucking minds, coming quickly to realize that justice or fairness is just a myth at best, a delusion at worst. 

Put a lot of thought into it. Some people will tell you that ‘it was just meant to be.’ But the more you think about it, the less you find yourself believing in ‘meant to be;’ the more you just believe in ‘it is.’ or ‘it was.’ ‘Meant to be’ is our way of trying to talk ourselves into a just and ordered universe.  The truth is that it either happens or it doesn’t, whatever it is. Sometimes things happen. Sometimes other things happen. Sometimes nothing happens. It all depends on what we choose in every moment. And then there is that mysterious dose of good luck or bad luck that seems to accompany everything. I believe that's what we are now calling chaos theory. The great God Chaos. He's got his hands in everything.

Its funny cause you'll notice that if something really great happens to us we’ll swear that it was magic or perhaps even the hand of God. But if something bad happens to us we’ll say it was bad luck. That's an interesting phenomenon. But in a way, its not such a bad way to look at things.

But as much as I believe this, as much as I try to talk myself into believing that there isn't a ‘meant to be,’ sometimes I still cannot help feeling that some things were just meant to be. Isn’t that strange... I know me and Maddie meeting and becoming best friends was meant to be. me and Cleo too. as soon as I saw her time slowed down. Everything went into slow motion, like we were in a movie. You know you are in the realm of the ‘meant to be’ when things slow down like that. Cleo met the white knight on an airplane. Sat right next to him. Now they're married and have two kids. That's one of those things that seems meant to be.

In college I majored in philosophy. One of the great arguments of all time we learned is this very one. They call it free will versus determinism. People have been arguing over it for millennia. I sort of ended up right in the middle of it somewhere. Everything in philosophy was like that. it is the study of things that cannot be concluded. Philosophers spend their whole lives studying and arguing over things that cannot actually be concluded. That's what makes something philosophical. Puzzles without solutions. Jokes without punch lines. Games without winners. They spend years writing papers about these arguments, whole books about them. knowing full well going into it that they're conclusion no matter which side of the fence they end up on won't be right or wrong but just their opinion in that moment. I call that crazy. Why bother spending time trying to figure something out that can never be figured out? After a few semesters I decided I didn't much like philosophy. Life was confusing enough. I didn't want to become an expert at things that were confusing and had no conclusions. So I switched to studying literature. At least in literature we can draw conclusions. We can come up with endings to stories that make sense. We can make up the endings. That's what movies do these days. They make life seem like it was ‘meant to be.’ And that makes us feel good. That’s why we like the movies so much.

I have learned, or at least I've come to believe, that we’re not really looking to get married per se as much as we are looking for someone that loves us completely and that we can love completely. Marriage is more a cultural phenomenon. There are still plenty of cultures around the world that don't have marriage in the traditional sense and they human as we are. If marriage didn't exist, we’d still be looking for the same thing. our hearts would still long for a love that was pure and endless. Our souls would still be longing for that one someone in the world who we could love without doubt and without second thought and who would love us endlessly and completely. Marriage is a by product of this love. But I have noticed that a lot of people confuse the importance of the two. The real goal should be finding this love. I don't know if this love exists in one person forever. But I think we all hope it does. Even if we find ourselves in later years realizing that this love is in several people throughout our lives I think this is o.k. although I still secretly wish that it was just in one; that somewhere out there was this dream-mate... I don't know why we desire this....

Current Spin: rage against the machine, no shelter. Edie Brickel Volcano, Robbie Williams the ego has landed. Beyonce, dangerously in love. I really can’t believe it didn't get song of the year in all categories. I mean it was definitely THE song of the year. I voted for it. I think everyone else just gave it to coldplay to try to make things more fair or something... give the white folks at least one... 

Last screening: the picture of Dorian Gray, the BBC version. and also that old Nazi film triumph of the will.

Current Read: still studying the History of France. I am up to the 1930s now. crazy country. filled with war, revolution, and turmoil. I start French lessons this week.