what i wanted to say....

a turning point

2005-11-13T16:05:00.000-08:00

this weekend made me realize that yet again, i have morphed into the a different version of myself without noticing. unfortunately, i feel like i went back in time to someone i just couldn't ever quite get a handle on. it's kind of annoying. i feel an extreme lack of self-control, at least as far as doing things that might annoy people are concerned. i am so stuck right now, IN BETWEEN everything. i'm not really sure if i fit into anything or onto anything or around anything. just in between things. this wouldn't be a bad thing, at least if it weren't for the fact that i feel like i've been in between for the last five years. i know i can't leap yet, but at least i know i'm getting closer.

sad bastard music

2005-11-12T02:30:00.000-08:00

sometimes i put on music i've written and recorded while i go to sleep. it isn't because i'm narcissistic. it's because i can relate. i gave you much more than i usually give myself in those songs, mostly becuase i can inscribe meaning into them after the fact. but that's important. it's the mark of a good singer/songwriter's song. if everyone can see his or her own life in the lyrics, then they're effective.

it's working on me now. and not because of the things i wrote my songs about in the first place.

love needs a heart

2005-11-10T00:02:00.000-08:00

last week one of my good friends got beaten and stabbed by a gang of ten or so random guys.

it's made me really re-think a few things. and it's made me start praying more. i can't help him in any other way than listening to him. and i know that helps, but it doesn't feel like enough. i haven't been in this place in awhile, but i'm starting to remember this feeling, and i don't know what to do with it.

this week, a girl i was really close to in high school (and have since fallen way, way out of touch with) contacted me via myspace. she's married now. and she always had a crush on me. i sort of avoided her most of my senior year of high school, because i was stupid and immature. it dawned on me that since her, i've only had maybe 3 other people who got that close (or anything near to it) and they are, by and large, all gone the same way she went.

i'm starting to feel lonely in a way i've never felt lonely. lonely for being the person who never makes the effort to be better friends, or to stay in touch with old friend. i'm the guy who disappears off the face of the planet and re-emerges five years later, completely different and yet completely the same.

don't worry, i frustrate myself almost as much as i frustrate everyone else around me sometimes.

this sort of loneliness is making me miss my ex-girlfriend. not her, per se, but the feeling of having someone who i knew was there whenever i wanted her or needed her. i miss kate, too. because i think if i've met anyone in the past few years, she's as good a candidate as anyone i've ever met to become the next leap of faith. perhaps i could use one right about now.

i don't find it funny that jackson browne's "love needs a heart" came up on shuffle while i was writing this post. that song sums up my attitude altogether too well these days.

no more mopey shit...

2005-09-18T00:57:00.000-07:00

... at least for tonight.

i've been "joking" a lot lately about becoming a rock star. it's not really a joke, though. i know i'm good enough. and i know my songs are doing it for people. i've never gotten a bad reaction yet. i've gotten good press. you know how some people will always float, no matter how deep the water gets? i've been blessed to be one of those people most of the time. and while i may never reach the status of grammy-winning recording artist, i know i've got a future in music.

and that, for the record, is extremely comforting.

still?

2005-09-07T23:11:00.000-07:00

i'm finding that i'm still angry at the world. angrier, in fact. i wake up in the morning and look out and see yesterday shifted forward 24 hours. the time is passing, but nothing's changing. my luck has taken a turn for the worse and it's taken my good nature with it.

SIGH. i do a lot of that here, don't i?

paradox

2005-08-24T20:39:00.000-07:00

i'm so angry at the world tonight. i can't control it, i can't get what i want, and i can't want what i get. if all i want is to know what i want, does that mean i do or i don't? rather than mindfuck myself, i'm going to sleep. it's the best i can do.

why i'm done with younger women

2005-08-20T09:55:00.000-07:00

somehow this feels like the only place i can talk about this. it might have something to do with the fact that nobody reads any of this. anyhow, i mentioned a girl named claire. a couple times, in one way or another. after the last debacle with a girl, i thought i'd be better off taking some time away from "dating", whatever that is. and then i met claire again. i guess there's a lot to be said for chemistry, and we had a very brief fling. it was cut short because a friend of mine has a massive thing for her and while she's not interested in him, he's not interested in getting the point. rather than make it hard for people to be friends with each other (oops, too late, in some cases), she decided it'd be a better idea to wait awhile. and then suddenly, the other night, i'm on the phone with her and she tells me that she was talking to him. and that she really pissed him off. why, i ask.

"i met someone."

o-kaaaay.... i don't get this. claimed she hasn't felt anything in months and months, and she meets this guy and suddenly she's starting to feel again. my only question: why are you telling me this? are you trying to make me feel like shit? because before i was a little frustrated that timing didn't work in our favor, but i didn't really mind that things weren't going to happen with us. it was a pretty easy split, if you ask me. but now? i'm kind of hurt by the fact that meeting me meant SO little. i told her i didn't want a really serious relationship, but i absolutely didn't just want some sort of booty call, either. and she agreed. so, we were somewhere in between for a very insignificant amount of time. and then, suddenly, we were done, and in effect our whole thing turned into (basically) a one-night, one-time hookup. and now i feel slutty. and she probably doesn't even remember.

i guess the point of this is that i'm not sure why she thought she needed to tell me how amazing the new guy was. i don't care that she's dating someone else or that it wasn't me. i just don't want to have to think about the fact that i meant that little to anyone. i'm barely on the radar and i thought i meant a little more than that, i suppose.

the o.my is right

2005-08-15T01:35:00.000-07:00

well... as you ("you" in this case being absolutely no one - i hope) might already know, i've spent a good deal of time this weekend catching up on The O.C. it's not because i originally wanted to, but it's actually not that bad a show. i can hate it for being grossly mainstream capitalist america, or i can just embrace the fact that at least music supervisors with good taste can still get work. the latter being more esoteric, of course, but also much more beneficial to me.

curious thing, though. i just finished watching the entire first season (did it in just under 36 hours, too) and, for the sake of getting to sleep eventually, made sure i had a copy of the first episode of the second season as well. just to tie up the stupid cliffhanger loose ends they put on the finales of those shows. anyhow, i made it through the first season feeling moderately moved, mostly because of the (totally unfair) inclusion of some really good scoring, such as jeff buckley's hallelujah, but i didn't actually feel a whole lot more empathy beyond just yelling at the screen at the characters i didn't like. the end, however, was a bit sad. whatever, though, right? it's supposed to be; it's a season finale.

fast forward.

i start watching the way the second season begins and i'm completely blown away. when seth didn't have his friend anymore, he sailed away to portland and frankly, nothing in the last few months has struck a chord like that. which is why i'm writing this in the first place.

at risk of sounding ridiculously sorry for myself and completely maudlin, i'm just going to be honest. i started crying my eyes out every time he was on screen. it should be no surprise that if there was a character on that show with whom i'd empathize the most, it would be seth, and i do. but that was mostly for obvious reasons, at least originally. i'm kind of a smartass and i like music and things like that. i was more of an indoor kid with an imagination, and granted, they paint with the broadest of strokes when they create tv-drama archetypes, but they fine-tuned seth to be a lot like me. thing is, this thought just flashed, screaming, through my head.

you have no one.

you can't run away because you have no one to leave you in the first place. it would seem rather untimely. here was a kid who didn't have a best friend. got a best friend. best friend left. and this is supposed to be easy for people to watch because it makes them feel better about their own relationships in the long run. they cry while watching the show, and then they go out for a beer and have a good week. i, on the other hand, do not feel like it's going to be a good week. mostly because of what got me here in the first place.

my phone hasn't rang in days. not even my family calls me. i don't feel that closeness with anyone. claire, a girl who, for all intents and purposes, i do not know, is the only person i've felt at all close to in the last few weeks. i know things are changing at an alarming rate for me, but they have been for about a year and a half now. let's be honest with ourselves this time, okay?

self? you there? it's me. i just want to point out that you put all of us into a person who turned out not to be the one. and she kept a lot of what you put into her. and you're not okay yet. you're a pretty clever bastard, and pretty self-aware, at least most of the time, but you seem to have missed the boat on this one. don't pretend that this is the first time you've found yourself crying uncontrollably because you feel so alone. don't pretend like you haven't decided about a half a dozen times that you really need to start seeing a therapist. you're writing this down as proof to yourself and to the world that occasionally, you feel this way. it's easy to forget if you try, but immortalizing it on paper (well, conceptual paper in this case) should jog your memory. stop pretending you're fine all the time. you're going to have bad days, and you're going to be bummed, and you're going to have good days too. that's not to say that it's all good or all bad, but it's clearly not right if you feel like this, even if it's only a transitory thing. so do yourself (and me) a favor and go get help soon. stop watching ridiculous tv drama. well, wait till you've caught yourself up on the rest of season two, of course. but then deal with your life. because it's been pretty crazy too. you're not getting into fights or sleeping with your ex-girlfriend's mother yet, but things haven't been exactly stable, either.

love - and i mean that,
me.

missed connection

2005-07-23T23:39:00.000-07:00

you rolled on top of me last night in a dark room on a stranger's bed. your face was about 2 inches from mine. neither of us took that next step.

you're bad news, so am i, and we both know it. wanna makeout?

the way it is

2005-05-31T20:58:00.000-07:00

a girl i don't know commissioned me to make a mix cd for her, with a curveball. the keyword was "thunder." i guess i could have gone in a lot of directions with it, but i opted for the electricity in the air just before the rain falls, the lightning buzzes, and then the thunder rumbles. it's sort of... the human barometer. you know when there's a good midwestern summer storm coming, and it makes you damn excited.

so i found all the songs that i grew up listening to in my imagination summers. and put them onto a disk. it's quite an eclectic mix, too.

that's really my whole story. i would say more, but i'm not sure what to write. i'm having a writer's block issue the size of neptune right now.

i finished still life with woodpecker tonight, finally. great ending. i'd re-write it, but that would spoil all the fun. the last sentence is the most important. look it up.

bonding (like all atoms do)

2005-05-24T21:51:00.000-07:00

my new roommate, jason, moved in tonight. so he may be 31 years old. he may be a recovering alcoholic. he may be ... *gasp!* gay... (yes mom, so deal with it). he may be waiting tables at a don pablo's in bloomington, and he may be working 3rd shift at UPS. none of these things make him a bad person or even a bad roommate prospect - however, it's clear that he and i are pretty different. still, i think this is going to work out nice. i'm actually kind of excited. we had our first bonding experience tonight, driving to don pablo's to get a late dinner.

he pulled out a cigarette and started smoking it. and finished smoking it. and then threw it out the window. into the side of a state trooper's car.

red lights, blah, blah. turns out his license was suspended. and he has no insurance. due to parking tickets. unpaid parking tickets on a car he gave away to someone who never transferred the title, apparently. so i ended up having to drive his car back to our apartment. we ordered pizza and hung out. it should be a fun summer. i hope. at least my apartment won't be so messy.

privacy

2005-05-23T16:29:00.000-07:00

this post is just between you, me, and the wall. oh, and anyone else who finds it.

here's the lowdown. the absolute truth lowdown.

i think i've been kicked one too many times. you know when you're running and you're all out of breath and finally your body realizes that no matter how much it can't keep going, you're not going to stop, so it quits fighting you and you find yourself in that odd state of equilibrium where you can simply run forever? that's how i feel right now. it's like kicking a child so many times that they sort of come to expect it and eventually just curl up in the corner alone instead of crying.

i don't really know what the deal is with me. i feel like i'm socially bankrupt. i never call anyone, but even if i did, who would i call? i have a zillion acquaintances and no real close friends. the thing is, i think this bothers me less than i think, because i'm not really doing anything about it. if anything, i've pushed things farther down that road by making more superficial acquaintances. it's really frustrating because i know i'm not charismatic enough to rely on that sort of stuff to keep me busy. i'm a friend, not a dude. that's just the way it is.

i finally found someone who really likes me, too. and really wanted to have something to do with me. or at least hang out with me. and then she up and moved on me. and sort of fell off the face of the earth in the process. so here i am, after work (where i almost stayed late just so i'd have something to do), all alone, and looking at a long night of being by myself.

it's not like i don't enjoy my alone time. however, i've taken as much of it as i could in the last 8 months or so because i wasn't giving myself any prior to that. and now maybe i've gone the other way on that one too, because i'm not getting any non-alone time anymore. i didn't really think i was lonely until recently, but it's starting to eat away at me. because i don't know how to change it. i don't think i know anyone who i want to be better friends with.

i get sick of stuff so fast. friends, jobs, majors, girls, hobbies... everything.

this is a big sigh because i don't know what to do anymore.

SIGH.

you waited two weeks for this

2005-03-16T20:28:00.000-08:00

i want friends again. i hate doing everything alone.

designing mood swings with sound

2005-03-03T20:44:00.000-08:00

today i was in an inexplicable bad mood. i guess now that i think about it, it was the first time i've been in an actual bad mood in a long time. i guess i'm making up for the summer/fall when i was moping around all day long every day. still, the thing that gets me is how i have my pivotal moments in which that mood shifts. today it was during sound design. see, we get these heinously unfair class projects in which we're given about 55 minutes as a class to build a sound event. today we were to pick an emotion and capture it (without the use of a concrete plot/story/timeline) aurally. now, last time we did this project it was to create a realistic sound event that did tell a specific story. it was a mess. on of the other four people in my class seems to have a personal vendetta against me, and i'm not sure why. however, he was sitting at the board and computer and he was building our sound event. unfortunately, he wasn't very efficient and the group was having trouble coming to decisions. our event was unfinished, for one, and there were some really, really stupid things in it. it got torn apart by our professor when he came back in and listened. i mean, he couldn't figure out what our event was. so, today i decided that i didn't want someone else screwing up my grade. being that i use the programs we use on a daily basis and i'm really familiar with them and working with them quickly, i got to class early and assumed the position. thank god. now, i can't take a ton of credit; we did a much better job of agreeing/disagreeing on stuff today and simply moving on from one thing to the next. we put our entire thing together with about 2 minutes to spare.

the next part needs another introduction, i suppose. martin, the professor, does not give praise. period. you're lucky if he says "hm... that was okay," about your project. so after he listened to it today, and said "you guys did a really good job. really good," i nearly crapped my pants. that was the praise i've been waiting two long years to hear. literally, this is my 6th class with the guy and i can probably count the supportive comments he's given me on one hand.

i know this is a stupid post, but nobody reads this blog. i can write whatever i want. and i chose to write this today, because it was a huge personal triumph. as a theatre arts-sound design major, it seems obvious that i would want to do a really good job in this class because it's what i want to do for a living someday. i've been getting really discouraged by the lack of support from my professor, and he's the only person there who i can take these particular classes from, so getting some today really makes me feel better about my entire outlook on life.

okay, i digressed big-time from my point. the piece we did today was all about depression/despair/sadness. we started by looking for music and then creating an environment with a few sound effects and a little bit of mixing. of course, everyone was pulling really depressing music. and you know what? that is what made my mood improve.

catholicism: my culture

2005-02-27T19:51:00.000-08:00

this morning i got to thinking about culture. as an italian/german/irish/welsh/? 21-year-old male, it occurred to me that most white people in america don't have much "culture," at least the same way as my pakistani roommate or an african-american or an asian immigrant. to figure out what it is that makes up my background, i go no further than my upbringing. i was raised in a strict catholic household - church not just every sunday, but every holy day of obligation and then a few others days as well, catholic school for 9 years, prayers before every meal and before i was tucked in while i was still being tucked in, family devotions and rosaries every week, etc. the list goes on.

last year i started dating a protestant. she wasn't as much a protestant as she was a catholic-hater, because she scorned most things religious. after a few bad experiences with the religious types, i was sort of doing the same thing. to this day, i think of people (like g.w. bush) who proclaim their love for Jesus and i gag to myself. i think of pretty much every evangelical i've ever met and i shudder when i remember hearing them tell me i am going to hell if i don't either convert from catholicism or whatever else it is they're bent on. when i think of some of the people i knew in high school who only really went to church for the social element but still put on the Jesus-lovin' facade, naturally, i just get annoyed and start thinking about something else. i guess that as a result of these things plus the natural twenty-something questioning of everything i was brought up with (i feel i should believe what i believe, not what my parents want me to believe), i stopped going to church sometime last year and pretty much only went when i was home visiting my parents. i figured that if God wanted me, i'd wait till the both of us were good and ready, and i reasoned that i just wasn't ready yet.

fast forward. the last few weeks, i've been feeling like at the very least, i should be attending church. on top of that, i live about a block away from a catholic church which i had never been to and i just lied to my mom yesterday saying that i go there. this morning, i convinced myself to go to church there, finally, so i got up and went to the 11:15 mass. as the service was going, i noticed that this place was much different than any other catholic church. there were comments of acceptance for the gay lifestyle, and i'm pretty sure i saw at least 3 gay couples there (assumption based on sign-of-peace behavior) and so on, which was really interesting. however, there was a lot of stuff i recognized. obviously the songs, prayers, etc. that i haven't heard in about a year save for the 2 times i went home. it was at that point that i realized who i was. i don't get an ethnic background to fall back on. i knew that. i guess i never really realized how much religion is espoused in culture, and how much of that catholic stuff is my culture. i'm not sure what i believe still, but it was quite an experience to go to church and see something that i identify with so much more than i realized this morning.

sex and the city

2005-02-25T20:28:00.000-08:00

after a long year of working at it little by little, i've finally seen the entire six seasons of sex and the city. it's really embarrassing when i watch stuff like that and i actually feel something, because then i feel like i'm just a pawn in the writer's game to make people squirm or cry or whatever it is they want us to do, but sex and the city is different. it raises a lot of questions (okay, that's a bad choice of phrase) about the way things really are, although i feel a lot better knowing that the real world is probably somewhere between mine and theirs. still, i feel like i've learned a lot about real relationships from watching theirs evolve and crumble and regenerate and cycle. i have been every single character on that show at one point or another in the last year and a half... but i ended up (at least thus far) turning out to be ME. and i like that.

blogosphere

2005-02-12T09:44:00.000-08:00

i find myself wondering everytime i come to this site what i want from this blog. 17 people have come to this site. no big deal at all, right? this is, for all intents and purposes, as private as a journal i leave lying on the streetcorner in another city. all the same, whatever. i'm rambling about nothing. i guess that's what happens when you're bored and you're procrastinating.

what exactly does it mean?

2005-02-06T09:03:00.000-08:00

i have another blog on xanga. i still write on it daily. it's never stuff that's really important or significant, but i've got a larger following there than i do here (especially since i'm not sure anyone reads this). lately i've taken to reading up on my site stats almost as much as i read my comments, and what's more exciting than a new comment is seeing that "she" has come and visit. she quit xanga. she's not supposed to be on it anymore, right? yet she visits more than once a day.

it's one more piece of a puzzle that is bugging me to no end. two nights ago, my phone rang for the first time in about a week. since it's been refusing to do that, i was excited enough, but then i pulled it out and saw that it was her. i was even more excited, except that i was watching the premiere of a show i did some work on, so i couldn't really answer it. thankfully, though, the show was almost over and about ten minutes later after the final bow, i called her back. she had already had a couple drinks i guess, but she denied calling me. this confused me a lot, but when she showed up yesterday and showed her my call log and then she admitted that she might have called me.

we got to talking about relationships and stuff yesterday. i don't know where she stands on closure from her last one, but it seems to me that we're both ready for one. not that either of us wants one. i certainly don't.

i don't know why i was so worried, though. she's just like me in so many ways. she is me. she told me she's not the kind of person to have a crush on someone. she ends up dating friends after she's become friends with them. i'm impressed. most girls can't handle that and they miss the best opportunities that way, not to mention stepping on guys that inevitably give up and date girls like my ex-girlfriend (because i was one of those guys waaay too many times before). so does this mean if i hang on for awhile, she'll want to date me? does she already? the pace of things has been pretty rapid, since we've spent so much time together walking up and down the streets of minneapolis with a video camera.

are we there yet?

an open letter to someone who will never read it

2005-02-01T21:54:00.000-08:00

dear you,
i hate you. why did you have to be so damn cool? you're ruining everything. it's 1:05AM and i can't sleep. i can't get you out of my head. your coy antipathy only fuels my frustration/fascination with you. i wanted to be alone. i wanted my time. and then you came along and messed it all up, because now all i want is you.
love,
me

updates

2005-01-29T15:46:00.000-08:00

last night i did get a little human contact. and then i kicked a year and a half of recent history out of my apartment. i felt awful, but now i feel okay. i spent the entire day with the most interesting person i've met in a very long time. i can't think of many people who i can just hang out with, but at least now i can think of one more. the video footage is great, and the project is going to be awesome.

disappointments?

2005-01-28T18:57:00.000-08:00

it's friday night. nobody has called me. nobody has asked me to go out and do something. do i care? i'm thinking no... not really. what would i do anyway? but still... it reminds me that i have, for all intents and purposes, no really close friends anymore. there are people who i'm close to, but i don't see them often enough. there are people who i see all the time, but i think weekends are everyone's break from everyone. so here i'll sit, listening to my ben folds, waiting till tomorrow when my co-collaborator on my multimedia design for religious pretense calls me. that human contact will probably be all i get all weekend, and it'll be the high point of my weekend. sigh. maybe i should look into getting friends.

old obsessions, new interests

2005-01-27T21:02:00.000-08:00

it happens altogether too often.
1.) i remember something i forgot i forgot to remember. and i feel stupid because it was so damn cool to begin with.
2.) if i say hello to something new, it's a lot easier to say goodbye to something old. not that it was even hard anymore, though... sort of like holding a burial ceremony for a bag of trash.

breaking down the barriers

2005-01-23T23:31:00.000-08:00

i remember my first acting classes and how terrified i was. i guess it's natural to have a lot of inhibitions, and i certainly vowed to myself that i wasn't going to let them go so easily. then i found myself pointing a fake gun at one of my kids screaming the word "fuck" at the top of my lungs for ten minutes and realized that i had given in and all my boundaries were broken. or were they?
yesterday our department did something called 24-hour theatre, which, i suppose, is rather self-explanatory. i didn't really want to do anything technical for it (because i knew there hardly would be any to begin with) but i really wanted to be involved and i didn't submit an application in time to write or direct, so i signed up for what would be the very first audition of my fledgling acting career. it's not that i ever wanted to pursue acting anyway, but it seemed like fun and it's another really good thing to add to my resumé. anyhow, i was cast as a sarcastic gay guy with messy hair and a homemade "fuck me" t-shirt. cool. i'm pretty gay for a straight guy, so i figured that'd be no problem. i guess it should have occurred to me that playing a gay guy meant i had to play a guy attracted to other guys. attracted enough even to kiss one. and when the stage directions told me to do so, there wasn't much i could do besides kiss the guy or leave.

so i kissed another guy. on a stage in front of hundreds of people. and strangely enough, most people have just been telling me how nice it was to see me on the stage instead of behind it. weird, huh?

time to let go

2005-01-19T23:36:00.000-08:00

already? it's only the second day of the semester, and my personal life has evaporated. a little ahead of schedule, if you ask me. i don't like that every day i feel like a new person with a new mission. i certainly don't like that i oscillate between love and hate for some people who are very close to me within the course of a few hours. i wonder... who will i be by summertime?

i'm not quite sure. all i know is this - there won't be much time to post my blathering on any one of my (1,2,3,4!) blogs, so i guess i'll have to alternate. since i'm not entirely sure anyone has ever even seen this page yet, i guess it's no harm, no foul if i let it go till i find time. right? right?

(i feel like a little kid trying to confront the monster in the closet. i think you're out there, but i could just be typing this to myself.)

one year from now, i'll look at this entry and marvel at how clever/ridiculously stupid my words used to be.

alt-country music

2005-01-17T11:50:00.000-08:00

today i got into an argument with L. i was shamefully admitting that i spent a good part of my morning listening to brad paisley. my reasoning was simple: he's one of the few pros in a field of amateurs. i don't necessarily like what he does, i just like how he does it - because it's better than his peers. (example: tim burton directs a porn film) while we argued, i started citing examples of how country music more pervasive than we think. now i'm in the process of creating february's playlist (a bit early... but that's okay). country songs that don't sound like modern-day popular country music. i'll post the list here when it's done.