improv yourself.

Though the statistic is being disputed in an upcoming book, it's often said that fifty percent of all marriages end in divorce. I'm not certain which direction that author's research will put the magic number, but I certainly would go up with the offer given how many divorced, divorcing, and divorceable folks I personally know. I even know one couple who hit the judges chambers on the matter just yesterday morning.

I've been there, done that, and got my passport stamped. Mine is nearly three years old at this point. I have noted how we types all seem to flock together, or at least that's the coincidence in my circle of friends. Every Saturday night spent at our favorite pub finds my divorcee wife and I rubbing elbows with a consistent cycle of them. She and I have recently celebrated our one year anniversary. Our nuptials were stacked to the gills with folks who've filed and moved on to greener pastures.

The bright and colorful mystical land of splendor is one possible outcome, but I know a few people who've let the untying of the knot become the bane of their existence, and the source of evermore bitterness. I don't know which is worse, becoming embroiled in the long prison sentence of a stagnant toxin infested marriage or never getting over it. For some it creates intense cynicism and avoidance of relationships of all kinds, for some a continued cycle of the bevy of unresolved issues that marred the previous situation, and for others it allows for unbridled freedom and personal choice.

The key features of an intimate relationship that seem to surface again and again within our culture seem to rely on expectations of overwhelming hard work, petty jealousies, and suggestions that maybe you don't even enjoy your spouse/partner. If these things are true than move the hell on. There's no solid ground to build anything on. It's an emotional sinkhole with no feasible positive result.

The answer is simple, and it comes from an unlikely source: the stage. Sometimes a theatre game, and sometimes the main event, improvisation is a challenging diversion for an actor attempting to hone their skills. Memorizing lines in a script is often the easy part, but going off book and just going with the flow and focusing on the here and now takes far more skill.

The first rule of improv is to never say 'no'. No closes down everything about the scene. It puts up walls for the conversation being conveyed, the joke being set up, or the story that is being told. It grinds the gears to a half. The energy, wit, and creativity of even the weakest playtime improv ceases with answers in the negatory. There's nowhere to go.

The same can be said for relationships. The ground rules of, dare I say, traditional relationships is rife for the planting of the big ol' flag of NO. There simply must be nothing more enjoyable than to limit your partner or yourself from partaking of what life has to offer. This is why marriage, especially, gets a really bad rap. I think it's because most are too foolish and abiding to live it on their own terms, and with freedom, exploration, and a wingin' it regard to what they should do instead of what they truly wanna do. Don't try to control it, don't schedule it, don't set yourself up to fail. Set yourself up to win every single day.

photo finish.

The freaks come out at night 

-Whodini, 1984.

They are everywhere. It becomes even more apparent as the sun goes down. Around every corner, like some sort of stock footage from a James Whale film from the 1930's. Harsh shadows and chiaroscuro emitting from intense low-key lighting. This neo-human race is addicted to their pocket lining lives.

Although I've been providing bus loads of locals with them for years, I only recently took the plunge into the whole smartphone game. Their whole presence seemed to interfere with common direct, daily interaction with others, as every few minutes of seemingly normal connection would become interrupted by a technological commercial break, a phenomena one of my good friends refers to as phone time. For a while it seemed like something I could do without, but I too caved or, as one could attest, caught up to the new evolution of our species.

The cultural edict of today that flushes with so-called smart technology is the need to personalize everything. In the process of marking my territory and mentally pissing all over this new device, I kept coming face-to-face with a bit of a nemesis: Instagram.

Instagram. For some time my initial thoughts were, oh great, look everyone's a photographer now. Take your garbage pictures, then pimp them out to within an inch of their life, using editing tools to give the distinct impression that you've actually got some talent. I know this is territorial snap judgment of artists who are overwhelmed with examples of having less and less meaning in the world, when it appears everyone can do what you do.

I have felt this in the past within all of the things that I value about myself, whether as an artist, a writer, a lover, a man ... or so forth. I know it comes from my childhood, when nothing was ever good enough for the masters of the house. I know it comes from being the quiet one, the reserved one, the one that few have 'gotten' over time and who would define me in those precise, inaccurate ways. I didn't spring from a particularly positive, encouraging environment, but one built on fear, paranoia, and sadness, so I suppose one shouldn't be too surprised what hurdles have existed.

As a kid, I was given the impression that our culture was created from specialists, from well trained, apprenticed folks whose last names echoed their lot in life. As our culture has matured into the twenty-first century it has grown apparent with the expansion of the internet as the key resource in most households that everyone can quickly become an expert in anything. There was once was a time when one actually had to hire a photographer. Now everyone IS one.

Through the nineties there was a big push in Hollywood, by the likes of auteur Martin Scorsese to make sure that the home versions of classic and contemporary films were being properly restored and seen in full widescreen format. I still hear to this day complaints from people about the black bars on the TV, denoting the complete aspect is being maintained.

Simultaneously a perk and a drawback of Instagram is the fact that the final images are perfect squares, so the best part of your pics are seen, which can easily remove key content from your image.

There's a major difference between the photography one might frame above their fireplace in their living room, and the slew of madness that shows up on any given page of this techno application. To a point this is the made for television version of photography. What I have resolved is that Instagram is not photography, in the clear sense of the word. It's a whole other pop art form, a Polaroid instant camera for the current generation. As it's entirely a public space, it's Polaroid without all of the mystique and secrecy. And dammit, if I'm not addicted to it now.

anti hero

HIATUS
a gap or passage in an anatomical part of organ.

The anatomy lesson reads like so: opinions are like assholes. Everyone's got one.

AMC's highly regarded Breaking Bad ended its run last night. I have no input on the matter. I never saw more than a scene or two from it, thanks to promos here and there on awards shows and about the internet. My dark, twisty, anti-hero show of choice, Dexter, ran it's course the week before. I tend to keep my eyes off boards of this sort or another, especially as they relate to television programs.

Dexter's swan song was different, however. I couldn't get away from heavy handed remarks made by friends on their Facebook pages. And by that, I mean downright mean, uncharacteristic, and at times judgmental commentaries. The nifty hide and block features allow for a smoother road trip, but without these sort of personal designations the internet is rampant with unchecked aggression. We are overly inundated. Since everyone has a forum of one sort of other, it seems many people would prefer to simply yell the harshest, loudest thing possible to gain notice.

HIATUS
an interruption in time or continuity.

I have been on a lengthy hiatus from this forum on which I have been known to unload etchings of my lizard brain from time to time. Writing, like most pursuits, have consequences for absence. It is all too easy to lose the habit of it, allowing any number of other things to take precedence. I have a lot of almost books and other such material ferreted away that represent dropping the proverbial ball.

After a viewing of the surprisingly effective and engaging biopic Hitchcock, I caught a forty year old interview with the man himself in an appearance on the Dick Cavett Show. Essentially making reference to all art forms, he stated how he is always in the midst of directing. It's simply a part of his being. I can relate to that in a variety of ways.

I've been over this territory before, but I will decree here and now that there's no such thing as writer's block. That's not why I didn't post in here. I haven't been without words, or without expression, I've simply been putting all of that energy to better use elsewhere.

dirty laundry.

I like to keep my issues drawn
But it's always darkest before the dawn
Shake it out. Shake it out,
Shake it out... Oh-woah!!
  ~Florence + the Machine (2011)

When I was just shy of six-years-old I propped myself up on the counter of the second floor bathroom of the family's townhouse. Taking scissors in hand, I did my damnedest to straighten out and clean up what I perceived to be an unkempt mop atop my head. In the meantime since then I have spotted only a mere one or two ugly images from then bearing evidence that foretold of the sophisticated British hairline I would later develop.

Although these are hardly concerns I bother with given the '70's rock star beard and tresses I wear about town these days, the simple fact about hair cuts remains the same about many other aspects of life: there's no taking back too much.

The bane of the social media explosion of the past ten years is that of a pulpit open twenty-four hours a day. The expense of self-expression that unlimited is the construction of endless entitlement, whereby your concerns must be my concerns, your woes are now my woes, your sadness and dwelling shall be my cue to remedy, and so forth. I'm not above being there for a friend truly in need, but there's a harsher judgment to be shown toward those who have no ability to hold their tongue and must air out every thread of their laundry, no matter how snotty, how stained, how bloody, or seriously none of my business.

I take my art creation and consumption to visceral extremes, seeing the daring of new and unsettling exploration. I am not one to be easily offended by these things, but instead find the challenge invigorating. There is certainly a contradiction. I spent part of my morning performing an autopsy on our Amana clothes dryer trying to conclude what killed it. Maybe it's not so much what you do with your dirty laundry, as much as how often.

drama mama.

“Insecurity is love dressed in a child's clothing.” Gaelic Proverb

I have played on both sides of the fence when it comes to interpreting the distinction between the world before social media and the one we live in now. Surely I've been one to say that people act differently, or how my preference leans one way or the other. It seems so easy to plague the current generation's major communication form for abbreviated and harsh fashions of dealing with one another, but I'm actually thinking more and more that all it does is intensify what already exists.

I know someone with extreme esteem issues will likely spend every third day updating their Facebook status to its full character length with a long, meandering, rambling statement. It will be something welcoming pity and craving attention, and may often literally state these are not what are being sought. The begging and pleading for note and presumed advisement will be a lost cause by day's end, since the quick fix of interaction will not have had much effect at all and some variation on the same theme will show up periodically for time immemorial.

I believe it's a human imperative to go through awkwardness and discomfort about the flesh we wear. Without something to fight against, we often have no room for growth. But full grown adults should know better than to zip about the world dropping grenades along their tracks like breadcrumbs to etch out a trail of where they've been. Our problems are ours alone.

There's a concept that I realized without a phrase early on in my life, but discovered words for it about fifteen years ago. The world is populated by what spins in the new-aged pop psychology under the term energy vampire (also emotional vampire or psychic vampire). Whether or not your belief system allows for the concept of real world vampires, you can likely think of people with whom time spent is extremely taxing and after which you feel completely drained.

These folks do tend to bring a lot of drama and, in many cases, passive-aggressive tendencies. Over time I have disengaged myself more and more from these sort of people, using the block feature on my Facebook and literal distance in my real world approach to them. Unfortunately one can not always take a legal standing against such folks.

For one thing, I have a full time job with one such person. Recently our workplace was expecting the big-big boss to show up, to assess, criticize, and drop some whoop-ass. Despite my full support for the venture, this procrastinator had the audacity to drop some last minute panic in my lap in a text that culminated with: I am so totally screwed. Oh, well.

OH, WELL. There are few better bombs dropped on the English language than this phrase. What a brilliant way to give in and shoot up the place in a barrage of blame all in the same breath. It has taken me a long time, but I have found better ways to navigate my interactions with people like this. One thing of import is the ability to ignore the distracting bullshit conversations with them tend to get riddled with, and to instead focus only on what might be accurate.

I tell you, If anyone hates to be ignored, it's those blessed with this terrible disposition. They are quick to dive into the murky pools of resentment and insecurity. If you let it bug you, it's ugly, it's distracting, and it's all encompassing. These people become the conversation if you're not careful. They splatter their poison on you, even when they're many miles away. They want a reaction. Their air of self-importance and entitlement absolutely demand it.

Of course yesterday evening would close with an email containing these cherished words from my pop:

There are only two people on earth who have known you longer than you've known yourself. Your Mom and I. No news is very mystifying, if not downright scary. Please communicate.

As the writings in this blog can attest, as can those who know me best, I have never been particularly or consistently close with my parents. We have often done a dance of curiosity in an attempt to balance our extreme differences and our surprising sprinkling of similarities. I have spoken with them sometime within the last four or five weeks. Given history that's pretty damned current.




Ah, well.

muscle flex

There are a few distinct tribes of people with whom I have relationships.

The most obvious to me are the ones to which I feel the most commonality, and who have been explored the most consistently during the course of this blog, so it should come as little surprise when I reference them. They come with very little introduction, and often very little cash. They are the ARTY TYPES.

The second group of people sound a bit like some carnival of artists' side project experiment. These subjects are given high likelihood to wrecking havoc, having it drenched upon them, or seek out the worst possible response to a difficulty in order to create future episodes of misery they can weep about in overwrought prose on social media. These are the DRAMATICS.

Then there's the third. It's the place either of these types go when they're done with all of their playing around. They leave behind all of their lofty hopes and dreams, and all of their sleeping around and fucking things up royally for a life of the expected basics, and little hope for the future but the vicarious thrills that come from their crazy friends and so-dubbed precocious spawn as they wax poetic about the old days. These are the SELL-OUTS.

Yeah, I know. This is a brash generalization, but even still, you have been quickly able to pick someone you know who'd fit in one or the other category. What about yourself, though? Why is it that we often know others better than we know ourselves?

Now that I've ferreted my way out of the seventy-five hour work weeks, running a retail mart for a company to whom I have a hate-hate involvement, I can set back to some good ol' soul searching. Getting caught up living someone else's life, even if it's one determined at distance via channels of policy and overly measured purpose overtakes so many parts of your sense of self. At least that's the threat.

Let the type of person you are, and the type of person you want to be act as a gauge for what muscles you work out.

dark passenger.

Emotions can't be prescribed, prepackaged, manufactured, or otherwise dictated, so why does our culture persist in essentially napalming Valentine's Day all across billboards, advertisements, shopping aisles, and mindsets? Mass marketing and dispassionate displays of repetitive catch phrases, gaudy trinkets, and farm raised bouquets strike up the question of whether we are all supposedly seriously that alike.

I can't think of the last time I took a serious second glance at the card section, heart-shaped candy area, or the cellophane wrapped grab bag of candles, lotions, and other such chick get-up. Even Fresh Market, that small grocery chain who always seems to create an authentic atmosphere for it's passionate relationship with food, sold out to the duplicate gift giving idea. My wife and I tend to venture there on the occasion to window shop primarily and to pick up a few whims mostly. We found ourselves there yesterday afternoon, and were instantly taken aback at the front entrance which had been overtaken by penis wearing vultures tearing at the chocolate covered strawberry and coronary cookie display.

thirty six

identity crisis.

Who are you? Who? Who? I really wanna know....

Who are any of us? There's ever a plethora of identifiers that signify us from other people, whether a thread of embarassing truth in a dossier, or from skewed perspectives of those people in our sight line. We strive to be seen for who were are, but this is not intended to be a still body of water. The ebb and flow of our own character arc is a palm full enough for us to maintain grip on, much less expect our outer circle to keep tabs upon.

So what do we really know? There's that old time paradox threatening calamitous events should one ever take in their own presence whilst time travelling. But the who we are now is barely the who we were then and both of these folks couldn't hold a candle to who we're going to be. What could be the harm?

Think about it. Are you the same person you were five, ten, or even twenty years ago? Can you be held accountable for the actions, the thoughts, the hopelessness, the naivety of the one who was there instead of the present one who can now look back and say, if I had it to do all over again, dot-dot-dot?

be longing

STATICECLECTICISM is an on-line handle I have been carrying around for some time. I chose it based on the title of this brief bit of free form poetry I wrote to a kindred spirit of mine in November of 1998. I found myself attached to it as a secondary identity, because to me it spoke to a desire to be outside of norms and as a reminder to be ever evolving.

For me, creation sprouts from the culling together of many varied elements, whether dream, experience, memory, experimentation, research, synchronicity, or simply blind luck. Yet to remain static within endless possibilities addresses much larger concepts for me. I find that art without obstacles is rarely created and certainly quickly forgotten.

Boundaries can only be pushed when there is resistance and life is barely lived without challenge.

counter requiem

Lewis Carroll suggested we weave our tale by starting at the beginning. Shifts in narrative taste and the translation of truth into prose offers alternative paths to explore. It is often a better idea to jump into the deep end of the pool rather than talking yourself out of the whole swim knee deep in cold water, still holding onto the railing.

I have not written in here for months. This has hardly been due to a lack of words, which spout from my salivary spigot at a high rate on a daily basis due to necessity of rote oral defecation brought on by maintaining a talking job. Over the years, I have fine tuned my mode of delivery to avoid the robotics of many of my compatriots who have passed on, and those of the nervous newbies who've only recently joined us at the front. But half of what transpires is mindless at best and misleading at worst. The other fifty percent is made up of under-appreciated, under-valued quality information and of course plenty of one liners. My need for psychological exposition has been great. And dammit all, I have been hard pressed for quality creative outlets, or more than the occasional one night stand with the writer in me, because writing the most interesting, eloquent, grammatically correct work-related emails hasn't been cutting it.

My inner photographer hasn't let up, however. My aging companion of a camera travels with me nearly everywhere I go like some ventriloquist's dummy, countering my thoughts and echoing my visions without my needing to say a single word. I have captured thousands of images in a reasonably short time. The barrage of inspiration has been so strong. I have recognized the need and more importantly the ability to never put away the aching artist side of myself. With or without reward or note, it doesn't only have to come out to play on the weekends, but can remain in everything I do.

nouveau départ

2013! - cheers to new beginnings.

fail blog.

In November of last year I put myself up to the challenge of posting:

314 posts with 314 photos with 365 days to accomplish it.

This is image 235. I have been posting chronologically since I started, to maintain a semblance of structure even as time passed. I took this at the end of August. I have likely taken the remaining eighty photos that I'd like to share on here, but I don't have the time. Last week I worked seventy-six hours, the week before didn't kid around, and this week won't be much better. There's no way I can find the chance to finish this challenge. Oh, and my computer's monitor is starting to give me seasickness.

On the plus side, I'm gaining lots of material for future creative projects.

(235)

team colors

Pride.

Why so revered? It's a known deadly sin. Without it we seem without purpose, and drive. We want to take pride in our homes, pride in our work, and pride in our relationships. Yet it truly is an ugly animal, mauled over time by connotation and misuse.

A vision for it has been on my mind lately, as I have tirelessly expended myself attempting to create an atmosphere where pride can live and grow at my tarnished workplace. I have held all of the power, and none of it likewise. When it slips things go to shambles. This was the case when I arrived on the scene two and some months ago. Morale was in the toilet. Energy was held at a whisper. And anger ruled in a slow rumbling, underneath the surface of this place that leans a little to the west into a literal slowly digesting sinkhole.

I have held onto my pride with all my might. I value these things. Home. Work. Connections. I fight till last breath for them. Sometimes it's my own undoing. I don't always seek a tangible pay-off. I find worth in the action itself. I've always enjoyed kicking up dust, so to speak. I am terrible at being stagnant. I react like an animal in a cage, clawing and biting for any alternative.

I have been trapped here for some time, navigating instead through varied travails I've encountered. I didn't expect to be working for this company so long. It was the first shark that bit. Then I fell and fell into what came next. Inadvertent responsibility is tricky. I have invisibly done more than I have with note. I don't enjoy drawing attention to my contributions. But when you're a number, and little more than a dossier, to an amorphous corporate unit such as this, it becomes necessary evil, and a skill I don't have well tailored.

What I see as braggerts and bullshitters, the machine sees as success stories. I have fundamental disagreement with this methodology. It brings to mind a close friend of mine, who is (amongst other things) an actor. He doesn't believe the hype of his own cheerleaders. And he doesn't like to promote himself and network. My experience in the creative industries has shown the colors of these actions to be a self-congratulatory jerk-off cream toned mess. I can fully understand wanting to avoid it at the cost of... dare I say, pride.

(234)

spreading joy

 (233)

survival instinct

Fighting is essentially a masculine idea; a woman's weapon is her tongue.
 ~ Hermione Gingold

(232)

floral arrangement

 Welcome every morning with a smile. Look on the new day as another special gift from your Creator, another golden opportunity to complete what you were unable to finish yesterday. Be a self-starter. Let your first hour set the theme of success and positive action that is certain to echo through your entire day. Today will never happen again. Don't waste it with a false start or no start at all. You were not born to fail.
~Og Mandino

 

(231)

hallow's eve.

(230)

incidental mushroom

(229)

power play

He who controls others may be powerful, but he who has mastered himself is mightier still.

  ~ Lao Tzu

(228)

forbidden embrace

(227)

trippin' pinks.

(226)

blame less

I didn't do it.

I inherited a ship of fools nearly two months ago. Just as personality clashes and mental tensions were becoming unbearable at the Ghetto Shack, I was offered a vaguely spelled-out store manager position at the Brigadoon Shack. Due to its proximity to my home and its distance from all sorts of malicious intent that were urging me postal, I decided to accept. Flight or fight mode was triggered, and I took the leap.

The highers knew I had put in for extended time off for my wedding and honeymoon when I said I'd give the captain's wheel a spin. The first couple weeks were a grand assessment and overhaul period. The longest there had survived the asshole control freak manager and the kickin' back playing games on his phone manager, so my vibe was something new. They were not used to someone who actually worked, got things done, and expected them to as well. But they also were putting up their fight against change.

I left the store like a teacher would leave the place for a substitute teacher, with detailed assignments and expectations. It was a gamble. And unfortunately the dependability of the whole crew as well as the local managers I asked to oversee can easily be questioned. When I arrived back, it barely looked like I had been there in the first place. I checked in with everyone about their progress through their tasks - that they never signed off on, despite my clarity - and fault was thrown around every which way.

(225)

fertile ground

Like a welcome summer rain, humor may suddenly cleanse and cool the earth, the air and you.

  ~ Langston Hughes

 

Any second grader from my generation could tell you the one about Eskimos having hundreds of phrases to describe snow. Sometimes I wonder why we Floridians don't have a similar manual on how to speak of the rain, given its frequency.

(224)

got game.

Believe me! The secret of reaping the greatest fruitfulness and the greatest enjoyment from life is to live dangerously!
  ~ Friedrich Nietzsche

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