My friend Dan. He’s a model. This is his payback from the universe.
Ugh. This kind of trash is everywhere. There’s one author that is particularly guilty of this, but his name escapes me. Literally every single one of his books fits this description.
Change doesn’t happen through people being radical or angry or revolutionary. Or at least not good change. Instead it happens through dreary boring meetings where one side co-operates with the other somehow. Change comes about through a “YES”, an “alright” or a “Fuck it, I’m hungry…
“
Fed up with society saying a whole bunch of stupid stuff to you? I hear you. I’ve been studying what you speak of for five years and have read countless books on and around the subject and just so you know, society doesn’t say anything. Instead, there are hegemonic ideals to be angry at. But society… it includes you too.
“
The year is 2042. “I was born in the wrong generation” a teenage white girl sighs as she listens to One Direction and cleans the lens on her vintage iPhone 4S.
Music for Moods
As many of you may know I essentially have two moods, on or off. I try my dangdest to be as productive as is humanly possible during the day, to work and read and hang out with folk, and listen to things I’ve never heard before and learn and all that jazz. In other words I always have to be doing something. That’s why I upload, to my knowledge, more than most on ze youtubes. I take the spare time I have, which thankfully right now is pretty flexible, and keep on and on and on and make whatever it is I’m doing as good as it can be. If this works, it is usually accompanied by this:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=e8hg68e0vho
But sometimes it doesn’t work and I’m off. This usually correlates with feelings of anxiety and depression, in varying degrees. I can be a perfectionist quite often and not being able to meet the minimum standard of on-ness freaks me out, again to varying degrees. I hate being a shit perfectionist, not knowing what the level of appropriate attention should be and subsequently bottling things up as not to offend or irritate folk. These pent up off feelings are always accompanied by this:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=51S38RKzakM
It’s interesting, partially because Brian Wilson’s music flows gloriously whereas Daniel Johnston’s chord organ playing starts and stops twice as quickly as it needs to but also because both of these songwriters encapsulate being on or off the best.* Brian Wilson was notoriously attentive to detail and by god it worked, Daniel Johnston tried and tried but the idea of perfection, both in his recordings and personal life has always been an elusive dream for him.
These states both drove them mad and I don’t want to sound like in any way as if I am equating mental illness with genius but these states have certainly driven me crazy too. This time last year I went through a stage of being particularly loopy and particularly off, I listened and obsessed over Daniel Johnston’s recordings specifically because they scared me so much.
Thankfully though recently, Brian has been soaring through one’s mental airwaves like an old lovely angel. And I thank him for it.
Do you have a similar thing going on inside your head? Share your head music with all of the people!
*It’s sometimes not as binary as that. Closer to the “on” stage belong Rickenbacker 12 strings, The Beatles and that stuff. Closer to the off, we have 1920s and 30s popular music and Joanna Newsom’s Ys material. Repecive links below:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UrdIVQ_lmng
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=v9B4UD0Rp2c
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IrurstS9FPM
