New Song

This one's kinda weird, but I think I like it.

Dark Star

Lyrics

The Sky shines bright
With stars and satellites
You shined so bright
In my darkest night.

Dark Star,
Your Heart

This is my greatest secret
You are my greatest regret

In my arms
You lay still
"I promise", you said,
"I never will."

Dark Star,
Your Heart

This is my darkest secret
You are my greatest weakness

And so I gave everything
Just to be near where you are
And you shined with the stolen
Light of a thousand murdered stars
But your gravity's too strong now
Not letting any light escape
And your event horizon
Swallowed all the love I gave
All the love I gave

Dark Star,
Your Heart...

i hate everyone

just fyi

There are roads left in both of our shoes

So I had a thought.

I don't know if it's stupid, I just thought of it earlier today. It may well be. It may be just as stupid to take the time to tell y'all about it.

It may be even stupider to use the word "Y'all".

...

But I digress.

I am always confused by the fact that I show an interest in so very many different areas. Music, Film, Drawing, Photography, Special Effects, Graphic Design, 3D Art, Video Games, Writing, etc.

I've realized that this extends into smaller subsections of each of my hobbies as well. Generally speaking in 3D, people focus on one aspect, whether it be modeling, texturing, animating, rigging, rendering. I've never been able to focus on just one aspect. In music I focus primarily on guitar and vocals, but I've always dabbled in percussion, piano, bass, and more. To an even finer degree, just in guitar, I've never been able to settle on one style. I was primarily acoustic from the start, migrating more to lead guitar in the manner of Joe Satriani after a few years, then more towards the chunky rhythm sounds of punk rock, before shifting now to a much more acoustic/folksy style.

So I can't pick one thing to work on, to do, to enjoy. This makes it hard to decide a lot of things, not the least of which being my career. I enjoy a lot of things, and I think part of the reason for that is because I have trouble sticking with any one thing for too long. I get bored easily and I have to find something else to occupy my time. Another side effect of this mindset is that I don't really excel at anything I try. I never put enough effort and time into something to get really good, so basically I'm mediocre at a lot of stuff.

I'm not complaining, and I know I've said most of this before. I also know that the only thing keeping me this way is myself, and if I really wanna stop then I need to narrow down my fields of interest and be more committed and not so lazy. Oh, another reason I don't put too much effort into things is because the early stages of most things I try come really easy, so I can get to an acceptable level of competence with little or no work on my part. When things get hard, I find it very difficult to care enough to keep trying.

Anywho, the point of this blog is that I've decided on a course of action to hopefully resolve this issue. I'm going to start pursuing my hobbies more actively on a daily basis, and as a result I hope I'll see which ones I truly enjoy and which I just feel like I should try, or use as filler when the others bore me. So, I've kind of already got the writing thing covered with how often I blog, but I'm going to make a more focused effort to write at least one article or story every week. I'm also going to make a point of setting aside at least one chunk of one day per week to go out and shoot pictures. I work in 3D, so all I have to do to make sure I put more effort into that is be a better worker. Two birds with one stone, yay. I'm also going to try to spend two nights a week working diligently on music. Writing, not covers. Let's see...what else...well, I've pretty much given up on drawing/painting, but maybe I'll see about setting aside a sketching day too.

As for the secondary aspects of each hobby, I think I'm gonna try and narrow them down to the areas I've spent the most time on up to this point, so I'm dropping piano and drums for guitar and vocals, and I'm focusing on the singer/songwriter aspect of music more than any other.

Well, I'm really hoping that I can follow through on this, another personality trait I find myself lacking is ambition, which makes it difficult to stick with shtuff, y'knowz?

But hopefully not only will this help me narrow down my areas of interest and help me learn a little about myself and what I want to do with my life....but also forcing myself to be more dedicated in my pursuit of these hobbies should help me improve in those areas right? And if I succeed it'll mean I've learned how to apply myself more, which is important!

Huzzah.

Anyway, not that you're at all interested in my plans and aspirations, but I thought I'd share that with everyone. Maybe you can even help me stick to it or something, like an accountabilibuddy!

K, thanks for reading, talk later :)

loren

P.S. In the interest of overall general improvements to myself as a person, I resolve to sing at the next karaoke I attend, sober or otherwise, and I resolve to dance like no one's watching at the soonest possible opportunity, but I'll need to get good and wasted first :)

As it began...

Sometimes Life seems to get in the way of Living.

I'm not claiming this is a new or even an original idea. I've talked about this before, I've read plenty of articles from others talking about the same or similar things. And the very first time this line of thinking even entered my head was because of quotes from old writings by men a lot smarter than myself.

I just realize from time to time that I still see my life as "on hold". As Colin Hay so succinctly put it (and as I quoted last time we talked about this) "I'm waiting for my real life to begin." It seems like there's always something we're waiting for, some step we need to take or a place that needs to find us before we can start living. Whether you're fifteen and counting down the days 'till you can get your license or if you're sixty and counting down the months 'till you can get at your 401k.

Everyone seems to be waiting for something.

Maybe you're 22 and you just can't wait 'till you're finally done with school, so that you can start your real job, make your real friends, start a real relationship, buy a real house, maybe start a real family.

There's a lot of quotes from songs and movies that I feel express this same sentiment.

"Life is what happens while you're busy making other plans."

"Life moves pretty fast, if you don't stop and look around once in a while, you might miss it."

And one of my personal favorites, perhaps a little less directly related...Jack Nicholson in "As Good As It Gets"

"What if this... is as good as it gets?"

So maybe that last one's a little more on the depressing side, and not quite in the same vein as the others but...I mean think about it. You're going to incur more debt. You're going to have to work more and harder. You're going to have more responsibility. You're going to have more heartache. You're going to have more physical ailments. Your life is going to get harder.

Maybe this is as good as it gets.

Maybe life isn't just around the corner, maybe life isn't about to start.

Maybe life started the day you were born, and it's passing you by every day you wait for it to just happen for you.

And maybe, just maybe...that shouldn't depress you. The fact that life's going to get harder should make you appreciate what you have now all the more. And the fact that it's going to get harder means that the joys will get to be bigger too. Imagine actually owning your own house! What a huge responsibility, financially and just in time and effort. But how cool :)

Imagine being married to the person you love. Sure it's the second biggest commitment you can make to another human being, and it'll be hard, and painful, and expensive, and scary. But imagine actually getting to be with the one person you want to spend the rest of your life with every day.

Imagine having kids. The single greatest responsibility any person on earth can have is to have children. The scariest job, the most pressure, the most time consuming and confusing and hardest thing you'll probably ever have to do. But you'll have a child. A child. Your son or your daughter.

Life is gonna get harder, but it'll get more rewarding. Things will never ever be perfect, and they'll very rarely turn out according to your carefully laid plans, but it's life.

Your life isn't waiting for you to finish school. Your life isn't waiting for you to start your career, or find your house, or start your family. Your life isn't waiting for your kids to go off to college or for you to retire. Your life is happening every day, and the only thing stopping you from living it, is you.

And by you, I mean me. This of course, is a blog of my thoughts directed at my self, I can't speak for anyone else. All I hope is that what I write makes sense to someone other than me.

Thanks for reading,

loren

P.S. This is a great quote...I think it sums these thoughts up nicely. I'm trying really hard to be this person...especially the last line :)

"Work like you don't need money,
Love like you've never been hurt,
And dance like no one's watching."

You Should Have Dumped Her In Pittsburgh

You don't live in Pittsburgh. In fact, you've never even been there, and the only time she was there was for a Star Trek convention her last boyfriend dragged her to over five years ago.

No, you two have never been to Pittsburgh, but you are something of a movie buff. You've always had a knack for remembering movie lines too, word for word even. You're secretly proud of it, even though it only really serves to annoy people. Loser.

Anyway, about six months ago you met this amazing girl. Your opener was "Of all the gin joints, in all the towns, in all the world, you walked into mine." and inexplicably, it worked. And when you used to answer every request by saying "As you wish", her knees turned to putty. The very first time she told you she loved you, and you responded "I know", she didn't slap you in the face and call you an arrogant prick like your last girlfriend. She kissed you long and hard, as though you'd just been freed from a carbonite prison.

And when you were lying on the beach, looking up at the stars, and you said "I could die right now, Clem. I'm just... happy. I've never felt that before. I'm just exactly where I want to be", she didn't even balk at being called another woman's name, she just snuggled in that much closer to you and held you till the morning.

It's only fitting then that now...at the bottom of everything, when all the love is gone and you can barely stand to look at eachother...when the only feeling stronger than the emptiness is the anger at having wasted so much time...when you're sitting on your ottoman, staring away from her, out the window, like you don't care if she goes or stays...when she's standing behind you with her suitcase in hand, hoping for a sign, praying that you'll say something to make her stay, some kind of clue that it was ever real...when she sheds a single tear, turns away, and walks out the front door...it's only fitting, that as the door is about to slam shut behind her for the last time, you lift your head and shout, "I should have dumped you in Pittsburgh!"

There are some things I understand. This is not one of them.

I guess I've always been...well, what you might call generous with money.

Really I'm not actually, I'm very cheap, almost stingy. At least, that's how I feel. But it's never bothered me to pay for a round, or to do the driving so no one else has to pay for gas, or to get the check at dinner or something like that. I don't think it's a good thing, I'm not proud of it, it's just how I am I guess.

I'm especially not proud of it when I think about the reasons behind it. I think first and foremost, I just don't really care too much for money ('cuz money can't buy me love). Seriously though, I worry about money sometimes, but I don't know, I feel like it's better to be generous with it now and make people happy than to hoard it all for yourself so that you can be happy down the road.

Unfortunately, another reason I'm maybe a little more willing to spend money on people is that I don't know of other ways to properly display affection. We're not just talking romantic affection here either, I mean to show friends I appreciate them, family that I care about them, anything like that. It's the easy way out. I don't have to think about it. I have money, they need money. Me spending money on them = me showing I care.

It's like giving someone money on their birthday. It's a cop-out. I want people to like me, and since I'm not quite as funny, not quite as intelligent, and not quite as charismatic as your average earthworm, I have to find other ways of making people happy, which results in them liking me. In my mind at least.

I try to find other ways too, being there to talk, making mix cd's, buying little gifts I know they want (again with the money thing there...), that sort of thing...taking out the trash, running errands... I dunno...

Lately it kind of seems to have been pissing people off though... which confuses me a little bit....unless I'm one of those jerks who buys everyone's dinner and then makes sure they all know how generous he is...or bitches about having so little money or something....God I hope I'm not that guy.

So, I guess, if I buy you food or something, don't get mad at me. And whatever you do, don't ever feel like you owe me. Maybe that's what it is, I know I hate feeling like I'm in someone's debt...I want to repay them for whatever it is they did...Well, you never have to feel like you're in my debt. You should just feel special, because it means I like you, and I hope that you like me too. It means that in my awkward, roundabout way, I'm doing what I can to make you happy, in return for how happy you (my friends) make me. That's all. I feel like I get a lot more out of my friendships than my friends do, you guys make me really happy, and I want to do whatever I can to make you happy too.

And if it's just plain offensive and I need to stop, tell me that. I don't wanna be a jerk.

Thanks for reading,

loren

The good...that won't come out.

Do you ever feel as though greatness lies just beyond your reach?

Your arms outstretched, your fingers extended, grasping blindly in the darkness of mediocrity...

I feel that way. Perhaps it's denial, my desire to see worth in my self and in what I do.

I don't know, and I'm not un-biased enough to analyze my motivations, all I know is how I feel.

I feel as though I'm plodding along in the various areas I apply myself creatively; music, photography, writing...I know that my output is sub-par for the most part, perhaps average from time to time.

I don't fancy myself a Mozart, a Lennon, a Bresson, a Van Gogh, an Escher, a Wells. I don't even see myself as one of the millions of creatives who fly just under the radar their whole lives, doing well enough in their craft to make a living, but never quite attaining wide recognition.

I have no delusions of grandeur in that sense.

However.

I can't shake the feeling that...somewhere inside me (perhaps yet to be brought to light through the hardships of life?), somewhere there is greatness. The feeling that, if I continue to try, and practice, and study, and create, that eventually, something good will come of it, that I will, if not hit my stride and start outputting genuine art, perhaps at least I'll find my "One Hit Wonder".

Like I said, maybe it's just that I have to believe there is greatness in me to stave off despair at my current sad state. Perhaps it's that I refuse to believe that I would be created with this intense of a desire to succeed and be denied the talent. Maybe it's that I've heard from enough people who say they made it through hard work and struggle instead of naturally in-born skill.

Maybe it's not even that I lack the talent, maybe it's my complacency, my fear of change, my trepidation of baring my inner self in the way art requires to the outside world. I've never liked criticism, I've never thought enough of my own work to proudly display it.

Maybe I just lack the ambition. I feel like there are open doors, and I ignore them, or make up excuses to not take the options laid before me.

The door is unlocked, but the distance is simply to great for me to traverse, the handle simply too large for me to grasp, the door too heavy to open, and the threshold too small for me to enter.

I feel that I have greatness within me, I pray for the courage to find it, and to let it out.

...When the world ends...

Last night I dreamt the world was going to end.

I was with the girl I loved when we found out, we decided to split up, she to find her family and friends and warn them of the danger, while I would try to rally together those we could trust and prepare a place to live in the wake of the coming cataclysm.

I found a handful of those I could trust and we began moving to the higher ground of a tall but sturdy structure in the middle of a large city. What food and supplies we could find we took. We did our best to construct shelter and barricades to protect us once the disaster struck.

All the while my thoughts were with her, a cold fear growing in the back of my mind every second that she was out of my sight.


Soon it became too much to bear, while the others continued the work I had specified, I tried to call her. Luckily, our cell phones still worked, and the satellites had not yet ceased their function, as they surely would in the days and months following the end of the world as we knew it.

The slim plastic of my phone slid smoothly into place as I used the touch screen to find her name in my contacts list. The phone rang.

And rang again.

And again.

A fourth time the phone rang.

There was no answer.

I tried my best not to panic, surely she was just away from her phone, or perhaps the noise from the growing crowd was too loud as she drove back to our hastily assembled fortress. I tried my best not to allow the darker thoughts to surface, not to allow myself to think of the other possibilities.

We had been lucky to learn of the imminent doom mankind faced earlier than most, but we had known it wouldn't be long before more became aware and tried to take our stronghold from us. The new danger of being destroyed not by the coming disaster but rather by our fellow man was enough to briefly distract me. We needed to focus on the barricades, we needed to arm ourselves, we needed to secure a route for my love on her return journey, and we needed to know how many people she was bringing back with her.

I knew it was a foolish idea to let her go alone. "Wait" I'd begged her, "Wait until have more people to accompany you, wait until I can go with you, I'll keep you safe!" But she'd always been stubborn. Stubborn and strong. It was one of the things I loved about her. I'd pulled her close and kissed her. She kissed me back, and we both knew we meant that kiss more than we'd ever meant anything in our lives. As I pulled away, we looked into each other's eyes. There were no words. None that would suffice, and none that were necessary. She turned and left without looking back, and after she'd gone beyond my sight, I did the same.

She'd been gone for four hours, and every time I tried to call I got no response. The fear of my own death paled in comparison to the fear that I might never see her again....

I knew it was futile, night was falling and electricity had gone out in the city an hour ago, and there was no way of knowing where or how far she'd gone, but I had to find her. I knew that survival meant nothing without her by my side. I had to find her.

And so I left.

The streets were wet. It was quiet...the darkness was unnatural and oppressive.

I didn't know where to look.

I had one solitary hope, thin at that, but a hope nonetheless... perhaps now, when all else seemed lost, and when my only thoughts were of her, and of our first day together on the beach...perhaps her thoughts lay there too...perhaps I would find her there.

I drove north along the coast as fast as I could for as long as I could, but my gas gave out while still miles away. I got out and ran, and my feet grew heavy and my lungs burned. The sky was lightening as I ran, the night was almost over.

The end was coming.

I kept running until I finally found the place where we first walked along the shore, awkwardly making conversation and trying to seem more comfortable than we were. The gate was locked, so I jumped it.

I ran to the shore and collapsed in the sand. I saw footsteps, but I could go no further.

And then I heard her voice.

Singing our song to the heavens, she was just down the beach, I saw her as she saw me.

My strength was renewed.

We ran to each other and our bodies fell to the sand as we collided. I held her tighter than ever before, knowing I would never let go until the end of my life.

The sun crested the restless waves of the Pacific ocean as we lay in the sand, and in the coming light the stars were winking out. This morning though, was unlike all the others in time before it....For as this night ended, and this sun rose, on this new day, the stars did not simply disappear in the fiery light of a new day.

No, on this day, the stars were crashing all around. Each light that vanished from the heavens fell to earth in a brilliant flash and thunder.

I saw the light of the falling stars reflect in her eyes, and I was complete. The heavenly fire that claimed our lives found us warm in each other's embrace, ready for whatever awaited, so long as we had each other.

Delayed Reaction

I have a feeling that I'll need to write about each and every one of the short stories I read in this Stephen King book....

I was actually relatively unimpressed with the most recent one I read, about an old man's recollection of a childhood brush with the devil himself by the banks of a river in his small hometown.

The writing was good, but I didn't really feel the story went anywhere, and I certainly wasn't frightened, especially not to the extent which the first two I read frightened me.

Mr. King included a small afterword with each short story with his thoughts on it, and he admits that this isn't one of his favorites either, so I felt validated in my opinion and moved on.

However

It was an exceptionally dark and cold night last night while I was driving home. The clouds hung low, the fog rolled in thick off the coast, and the darkness was less an absence of light and more a tangible presence, oppressive and heavy...

I tried to ignore these dark thoughts that flitted about like bats in the deep recesses of my mind, but I found no relief, rather, the more I attempted not to think about it, the more I found myself convinced I was being watched....by the darkness.

At this point I still couldn't place the source of my fears, but suddenly a light flared in through my windshield as i drove by a construction site on the side of the road in Pismo, and I could have sworn that I saw a figure in my back seat, a figure with a long, pale face and deep holes where his eyes should have been, holes that flickered with the light of an unholy flame.

As quickly as it was there it was gone, but now I had a face for my fear, the man in the black suit, the man who appeared before a nine year old boy on the banks of the rushing river many many years ago. And suddenly I remember the last line of the story...

"Suppose he were to come back and find me so....And suppose he is still hungry..."

I was terrified the whole rest of the drive home, constantly checking my rear view mirror, dreading the possibility of sighting the face in my back seat again. My eyes darted wildly from the road in front to the darkness racing by my windows searching desperately for a dark figure following along in relentless pursuit....

But I saw nothing.

Stephen King? Good writer. I'm not sure what it was about this story that took so long to hit me, but it hit hard.

Suppose he's still hungry....

If I don't read it...it won't happen...

I'm in a book.

I don't mean literally in a book, nor do I mean, figuratively, that I am reading a book.

I mean to say that I am reading a short story so ...engaging, that I feel as though I am in the story, that I am the protagonist, that the conflict is my conflict, and that his terror is my terror.

Unfortunately, the story is of a man in a venom induced state of near-death being brought in to an autopsy room in a body bag. Not dead, but unable to communicate the fact that he is living, the man is doing all within his power to stop the doctors from cutting him up like so much beef.

I can't read the rest...I have to read the rest....I don't want to know what happens...I must know what happens.

If I don't read the story, I won't find out that he dies, and therefore I die, I won't have to go through the excruciating torment of being alive during my own autopsy. However, if I don't finish it, I remain in this constant state of terror, poised on the brink of madness, praying that I might survive this ordeal, but never knowing if I'll be strong enough, if the doctors will be attentive enough.

I must know,

Stephen King is a sick sick man.

loren