CLEARLY OBSCURE

There are so many aspects to life that amaze me. Rather, there are so many aspects that I can't help but be amazed by them. Yet due to the volume of things to be considered, I am often not surprised when something new surfaces. There's a good chance that anything is possible to an alarming degree when so many fascinating things exist. I also feel that the obscure helps to expand my perception of the universe to infinite and impossibly small fractures of wonder. I also imagine these fractures to have their own great detail which would suggest even more underlying framework. If I were to learn one day that things could only be so small and a once undiscernable single point in space is now understood to look like this or that, and there is no material structure divided beyond that, then I would reasonably continue to wonder how much bigger things are, and of what mega-structure are we the fine details of.
And what if making sense of things is the wrong way to approach all of the information we absorb. Maybe there's always something to be read between the lines. A broader scope with less attention to detail may provide us with the 'answer' we're searching for as a species driven by progress and tormented by pride. We can't resist the urge to 'know' and we're fueled by a seemingly naive passion to prove that we're not worthless and that our human minds are actually thinking about something greater than just colors and shapes. Are our minds doing anything more than that? We've turned certain conceptual shapes into numbers and letters and devised language and math out of those abstract ideas. We've come a long way with such achievements, but what have we missed along the way?

What do we really understand about time, mass, gravity and many other fundamental components of our daily life? As much as we like to pretend that we have control over these things by launching rockets into space, drawing up schedules, and creating economies to decide the worth of material, we are really secretly and humbly governed by those Gods of mystery and magic. They are the things that are a bit out of place and they should help to make it clear that things may not be what they seem...

M.C. Escher's Moebius Strip 1

VILE REWARDS

Kurt Vile is a local musician who caught my attention a few years ago and his persistent and consistent style has kept me a loyal fan ever since. Kurt played a live show at AKA Music last week to promote his latest album Smoke Ring for My Halo. My friend John and I attended the gig and I was happy to find this video on Youtube of Kurt and The Violators playing Baby's Arms, one of the best tracks off the new LP, from that very night!

THE ULTIMATE QUESTION?

Lately I've been working a little nine-to-five job at an art supply store in center city. My schedule varies from week to week so I often find myself working Saturday and/or Sunday. Most of my co-workers have similar schedules, yet I am regularly asked on any given Monday, "How was your weekend?" as if I either presumably had those days off to relax, or perhaps I saved some big plans for those two days specifically- because apparently that's how the majority of the population functions.
I just so happened to have what I referred to as a 'Charlie Brown Day' yesterday (Sunday) so when asked the cliché question "How was your weekend" by my unsuspecting co-worker, I really let 'em have it by verbally administering them with every misstep I experienced just 24 hours prior! The play-by-play of my weird day began Saturday night when, curiously enough, I had somehow begun to convince myself that I was not at all scheduled to work on the following Sunday. I went to bed at a decent hour and was up at a decent hour Sunday morning and wanted nothing more than to sit around all day in my pajamas while watching goofy science specials on cable TV. I was living this dream happily enough until I decided to check my work schedule to see when I was due in on Monday. There, on the schedule, next to my name, I noticed: Sunday March 6th 10-6. Instant confusion set in. How could it be 12 noon on Sunday March 6th, and I'm bumming around in my pajamas, but that schedule was telling me I have already been at work for the past two hours? I called my boss and confirmed that indeed I should have been at work! My boss claimed he hadn't called me to report my error because he's not my babysitter; but shoot, how did no one worry that I wasn't dead or something? Anyway, I rushed to get ready and made it to work by 1 o'clock. Now completely disoriented, and given odd jobs all day as a well deserved punishment for my lateness, my botched management of my life left me in a grumpy mood for the rest of my shift. I genuinely felt dumb because I ultimately let myself down.

Once my shift ended 5 hours later I rode my bike home through as heavy a rainstorm as rainstorms get. Soaked through to the insoles of my shoes, I turned down an invitation from my roommate to see John Zorn play live in a rare intimate venue. I couldn't bear going back out into the rain and my bad mood probably would have left much to be enjoyed at the show. Instead, I crawled into bed at 8:30 and promptly shut my eyes to the strange world that lead me there. I woke up at 11:30pm Sunday night sweating bullets. The heat was on too high in the house. I put hot water on for tea hoping it could make me fall back to sleep, but I found only caffeinated tea in the cabinets. I dumped the hot water down the drain and returned to bed. Once I managed to fall back asleep I dreamt that I was out at the bar playing pool with some friends. In the dream I was drunk and I could barely stand up straight and I repeatedly dropped my quarters from my fumbling hands; totally embarrassing myself! Around 2:30 am I wake up to the sound of my phone vibrating near my bed. I assumed this was my alarm going off which would mean it's 5:30 in the morning; Instead, my friend was on the other end telling me she's been awakened from her sleep to a feverish vomit session! Oh No! I talked her down from a state of emergency so that we could both attempt sleeping one more time. Finally my alarm did go off at 5:30am Monday morning and my new week has since begun.

I know those aren't significant problems to have, but that goofy series of events certainly put me in an odd and uncomfortable state, and I feel like I'm still recovering. Now... what should I plan for this weekend?

MIRAI MIZUE MUSIC MADNESS

Overwhelming music video by Mirai Mizue! Check out thesilentballet.com for a hefty three part selection of short videos handpicked from 2010.

A long day of timbre from MIRAI_MIZUE on Vimeo.

PLEASE DON'T FEED THE GALAXIES

My mother recently sent me a link to an article about a 'blob' spotted in space by the Hubble telescope. Actually, the blob's image was captured by the telescope but discovered by Dutch Schoolteacher Hanny Van Arkel who is an active volunteer with Galaxy Zoo. Galaxy Zoo allows its volunteers to observe hundreds of thousands of images of space in the hopes of creating a data base to further categorize and ultimately better understand the nature of galaxies. In some cases the unexpected discovery may bubble to the surface and, who knows, you might end up with some ancient mysterious mass of gas named after you. I'm going to go volunteer as soon as possible, and I think I'll name my first celestial anomaly after my mom!

NUTS ABOUT THE NATURAL YOGURT BAND

11 - the natural yogurt band - soft cheese by naturalyogurtband

THE TRUTH HURTS

I'll soon be turning 31 at the beginning of this New Year and I feel that I need to write a little motivational post for everyone as I enter- as unprepared as ever- my 4th decade of life!
It seems like just yesterday that I was only 4 years old, and I can vividly remember a summer afternoon which led me to trip and fall while playing in the gravel driveway. A stone pierced the skin on my knee and the blood quickly found its way out of me. I panicked as a red line was drawn, from my knee, closer and closer to my striped sock. Mom, like a pro, helped me inside, sat me on the kitchen counter, sprayed the wound with some first aid kit stuff and, within seconds, magically healed my horrendously maimed limb back to the way it had always looked. My tears dried up, but the damage was done. I remember staring into my tiny bandaged wound as if it were a black mirror and a future of imminent gouges, scars, torn tissues, and drawn blood flashed before my eyes. I do remember it so well. I was immediately aware that this would happen again. I would fall, I would cry, I would be damaged, and I would be faced with physical pain many times over. That single trail of blood found its way down my leg as if to draw a timeline that was at the time yet to be marked off by any significant events. In that profoundly prescient moment it was clear that those days, those horrors were going to be unavoidable. I accepted it... or forgot about it once I got my hands on some Legos...
That bright red time line has certainly reappeared many times in 30 years, each time documenting a new momentous occasion. The line is rarely straight these days and it often branches off violently in many directions. Sometimes it really is as gory and painful as it appears to be, and sometimes I can get away with spraying it with that magic first aid stuff and it goes away with no tears. I still often stare into the wounds and the wounds still stare back; However, these days I'm not looking into an abyss of terror presented to me by some stranger. No, the blood and pain and I have almost become close friends, and we would almost look forward to seeing each other if the encounters weren't so random and typically inconvenient. We've shared and survived many close calls in this lifetime and we've accepted that there is no way to be more prepared.
So onward through 2011, and may it kick our asses so that we may outlive any of those threats that we feared when we were younger. We can't allow ourselves to be bullied by our own doubts and we certainly shouldn't fear death, but we can have respect and patience for the unruliness of time. Cheers.