Monthly Archive for September, 2007

With Or Without You: Frames

Published on September 26, 2007 in Musical Endeavors, Present and Well-Being. 3 Comments

Part 1

So on my first day of school I wake up, begrudg­ingly, on time and reach over to grab my glasses and they’re gone.

What the hell?

But then remem­ber that I watched an episode of Peep Show on my com­puter, lying down on my bed right before I went to sleep.

Well damn-it, they gotta be around here somewhere!

I start search­ing my floor. Unfortunately my floor, which is wood and cov­ered with a dark brown rug, is the same color as my specs and I have to shuf­fle my socks so I don’t step on them. Nothing. I get down on my stom­ach and try to look hor­i­zon­tally at the ground and see them peek­ing up. Nothing. I tear my bed apart.

Are they folded in the sheets? Stuck in a pillowcase?

Nothing. So now I’m kinda feel­ing defeated, still really tired, and the bril­liant idea came into my head…

What if I reen­act the scene, maybe then I’ll get a bet­ter idea of where to look deeper.

So I doze pretty quickly, almost sure that they’ll just show up in my hand when­ever I decide to wake.

(2 hours later)

Nothing. Things start to get very frus­trat­ing for me. I’ve now missed my first class at my new school but I can deal with that, what­ever. It’s more that I’m lit­er­ally quite attached to my glasses, they have been a part of my life — my face — since I was in the 4th grade so nat­u­rally I am put in a weird posi­tion. I feel totally help­less, lazy, and a huge eye-strain headache com­ing on.

WTF?!? Why today?

So I decide to take the bus to work, I can’t drive. I adjust the com­puter mon­i­tor to the low­est res­o­lu­tion it’ll go and still scooch my nose up to the screen. But then I start to real­ize something.…

Without eye­sight, I have total free­dom. Well at least a sort of freedom…from stares, uncom­fort­able direct­ness, details.

I know I have to take advan­tage of the day, this feel­ing, and I start to enjoy being eye­less in Portland. When evening comes I play a show with Davis and Adrian at Valentines. Quietly con­tent with not try­ing to make con­tact with much more than the sounds my height­ened ears are awak­en­ing my con­scious mind to, I lis­ten to Privacy per­form one of the most beau­ti­ful shows I’ve ever heard her play. Our show is a mix­ture of me fum­bling a bit on an old Casio key­board and clos­ing my eyes and feel­ing my way around the elec­tronic drumpads. There’s a unseen energy that comes out when you for­get about look­ing. We were feel­ing it.

Even if I find those damn frames I think I’m gonna ride this day out sans sight

We go back to NoPo and Davis and I look around my room for a few min­utes. I’m check­ing the bath­room again, just in case, and Davis calls out “Hey, I found them.” I hear his voice as I walk down the hall. “These it?”, he says as he picks up my glasses from a milk crate next to my desk.

Yep, that’s them. But I’m just start­ing to let go.…I think I’m gonna fin­ish this day on my own.


Part 2

There was a pretty rad event last night on the 4th floor of the Oak Street Building, 16mm film loops by exper­i­men­tal short film­maker Devon Damonte and music from Michael and Curtis Knapp, Adam Forkner, and Adrian Orange. Co-presented by Marriage Records and our neigh­bor 40 Frames, it turned out to be, well, a lot like Damonte described it:

“Multiple pro­jec­tors manip­u­late hand­made cam­era­less 16mm motion graph­ics. Imagery is tex­tures and text forms rubbed from beach glass frag­ments onto var­ie­gated grids of engi­neer­ing plot­ting papers. Magical con­tact plas­tics, pho­to­copies and lots of adhe­sive tape are also involved.”

Read more about one of the films that was shown, “Radioactive Spider”, in an inter­view from 2002.

Here is a short video mon­tage of the event:

Jump In Too Easily

Published on September 13, 2007 in Uncategorized. 3 Comments

As organic as the oppor­tu­nity for me to stay in Portland pre­sented itself, it’s hard for me to feel like the deci­sion grew out of me the same way. I guess what I’m try­ing to say is god damn, I hope I’m doing the right thing. I sup­pose I am, and I sup­pose I know in my gut what I should do. But does that make it any eas­ier? Hell no. Perhaps that’s why it’s so hard. How can a deci­sion to leave the most sup­port­ive, lov­ing peo­ple you know and trust on the whole entire earth be a gut feel­ing? I’ve been wrestling with this sweaty ques­tion for a while now and I still feel beat and only mid-match.

Recently a dear friend wrote to me, say­ing “do every­thing with your whole heart”. These words have made them­selves com­fort­able in my head and I would smile when I thought of the words and the voice of the words. They would revi­tal­ize my core and con­tin­u­ally refresh my spirit with burst of pos­i­tiv­ity and enlight­en­ment. They’re not out-of-the-ordinary but they turned into a solid mantra, capa­ble and uti­lized by any­one and every­one. But recently I’ve real­ized that because I’m so torn by my deci­sion, I feel the dead, lazy feel­ing of inca­pa­bil­ity, the inabil­ity, to do any­thing with my whole heart. And that is a dark place.

When I vis­ited my grand­par­ents on my return trip to Portland, my grand­mother was show­ing me around their small apart­ment in Ripon, CA and she opened up their bed­room. “And there’s grandpa sleep­ing, sound asleep,” she said. I looked over and he was lying still on his side, no real motion from any part of his body, eyes wide open. This is how he sleeps: eyes open. He is now legally blind, fight­ing skin cancer–amongst other things–from play­ing too much ten­nis when he was a kid in Denver. He is now close to the end of his road. I have a gut-feeling that I just saw him for the last time.

I’m not try­ing to for­mu­late a cor­re­la­tion between my grandpa dying and my friend­ships dying. I’m really try­ing, but how can I not? I under­stand that there most cer­tainly will be loss. But out of that loss will come gain. It’s like I’ve cut a tiny branch, fer­til­ized by the growth in my lush for­est of lovers and friends, and am now try­ing to regrow a huge tree from the lit­tle bits of sap that I have pre­served from the beau­ti­ful fer­men­ta­tion of mem­o­ries. It’s not unnat­ural, in fact most of nature encoun­ters it far more than I ever will, but it’s a new expe­ri­ence, for me, in doing it to your­self. A process I can relate only to my expe­ri­ence of going off to col­lege and leav­ing my high-school friends and fam­ily behind. Looking back, there’s only a few friends who I still talk to reg­u­larly and even those con­ver­sa­tions seem to be harder and harder to jump into easily.

I’ve always hopped into groups of friends quite quickly, immers­ing myself deeply and then leav­ing. This isn’t some­thing I do con­sciously, but it in hind­sight I’m very afraid to how it’s per­ceived by oth­ers. The worst part I imag­ine is not that I did it, but that I did it with­out express­ing my sin­cer­ity for the rela­tion­ships that I took part in.

During my deci­sion mak­ing process I broke down one night when I thought about what my future looked like, and more about what it lacked. I sat in my car and lis­tened to Privacy and remem­bered so many cher­ished mem­o­ries with the friends I was about to leave. It was a painstak­ingly wretched process that I, only after the pack­ing and the final good­byes and the drive and the set­tling in, am now finally unearthing the tin­gles in my belly, my gut, and my head.

Although my eyes still work, I imag­ine myself some­day at the point my grandpa is at now: eyes open, see­ing every cher­ished face and reliv­ing each mem­ory over and over again, sleep­ing with light and cry­ing beau­ti­fully, with­out shame, bask­ing in the pure grate­ful­ness he has for his life.

Thank you.