Coda

I’m leaving this blog as it is, a record and time capsule of my first semester of college. I’m still around, working on music, writing, and studying. Check in at The Steve McQueen Appreciation Group if you’re interested in what I’m doing now.

iChat Book

I think people naturally sort of want to let go of their secrets- the things about themselves, or the thoughts they keep from others. So they’ll share what they think is acceptable to one person, then share something else with someone else (who they have a different sort of relationship). It’s interesting to read a transcript of someone’s private conversation and make inferences about the person based on that.

A collection of these from one source could be really interesting. You talk to your mom differently than you talk to you girlfriend, and your pals, but I think if you examined everything somebody said over a month or something, you could start to get a more complete picture of them. My computer automatically saves iChat messages with everyone I talk to (and it’s my main form of communication)- if somebody read all my chats from the beginning of the school year to now they would know a lot about me- more than I ever let one person know.

It’s an interesting idea (they could probably even be arranged to form a story), but I don’t know if I could let go of my secrets that easily.

Casino Royale and the move towards Realism

This week a new James Bond film will be released. There’s a lot of hype around this movie, as a sort of “return to what Bond is about”. This new movie sets out to be more realistic and mature than the prior films in the series- films that at best took occasional artistic liberties with reality, and at worst had Bond chased on an iceberg by a beam of sunlight.

I’m excited about it, because I’ve always been a fan of the old Sean Connery films. Spy stories can be a lot of fun, but after Connery departed from the role Bond’s adventures grew more and more outlandish (fighting on the Golden Gate bridge, villains with razor sharp metal teeth, submarine cars…).

It’s interesting though, how entertainment more and more tries to mirror reality. Movies were more realistic than plays- and since the creation of the motion pictures the tendency has been to move further and further away from the absurd.

In the last five years reality tv has rose to power. The traditional sitcom has died off- NBC’s “Must See Thursday”, which had for twenty years dominated comedy with shows like Cheers, Seinfeld, and Friends, now has a program devoid of any laugh track. The popular comedy on tv, The Office is a single camera comedy based in a paper distributor’s Scranton office branch. If it was any more real it couldn’t be fiction.

James Bond isn’t the first franchise to get this treatment either. “Batman Begins” was released last year to wildly popular reviews. It too took a gritty, real world look at a character that had in the past been written as larger than life.

I think the change is good. The more like real life the stories become, the less people will care if their lives are like those in the movies. At the same time it’s getting easier and easier for people to create their own entertainment. Perhaps when these two movements intersect everyone will finally have their fifteen minutes.

The Perfect Routine

have come to the conclusion- after thinking about it for eighteen years- that if you don’t want to do something there’s no point in doing it. After you make one concession by doing something you don’t like it always leads another. The rationale is always that if you kept doing whatever it is that makes you unhappy a little while longer, eventually you’ll get to whatever it is you want. Making these compromises becomes a habit and you learn to conceal your unhappiness even to yourself. It’s just a facade though- your discontent is buried by your desires and fear of failure, and it will lie there nagging at you, keeping you from ever being really happy on a day to day basis until it erupts.

My plan is to try to live my life in such a way that I wouldn’t mind living it again (both because I think I’m bound to, and because it’s a good way to help you decide what will make you happy). I don’t mean to try living my life like a movie star, or an action hero (not that adventure will be avoided), but I think a good way to start is by imagining a perfect routine. Something realistic that I think I could do over and over for years without getting bored, tired, or unhappy with it. You can’t find an answer if you don’t know what the question is, and you can’t start living the life you want if you don’t know what the daily ins and outs consist of.

I would start my perfect routine by waking up around eleven o’clock and having a bowl of cereal. Nothing fancy- even if I ever get to be a billionaire I don’t think I’ll want anything more than a bowl of cereal in the morning. Then I would dress into my bicycle clothes, and go for a nice long ride. I’ll have the best bicycle I can afford (so I’ll be riding my twenty year old ten speed for awhile), I’ll get to explore, get some exercise, and have some time to think about whatever I’m thinking about that day.

Get back from the bike ride around four o’clock, and hang around for a half hour or so before eating dinner by myself. I figure I’ll be done with my exercise, my relaxation, my daily thinking, and most of my eating by five o’clock. If I give myself eight hours a night to sleep, then I’ll have ten hours to work. That seems like a good amount of time to get things accomplished, but at the same time not so much I go crazy.

On a regular day I see myself leaving after dinner to play my bass somewhere. It won’t be a normal job, so there will be some variation from day to day. A night that I play a show is easy because it’s clear how what I’m doing is helping pay for my rent, my cereal, and my bicycle. When the evening doesn’t have something with a similar, specific purpose, that’s when it’s most important I budget my time wisely. Of the ten hours I think two should be spent on a jobless night pursuing paying work. Even if I have something lined up that pays the next five evenings, I should call people I work with (or want to work with) and chat to build and maintain relationships, practice (to ensure when I do have a job I play well), and other things to help find or keep jobs.

The next eight hours are “free”. They aren’t to watch tv with, but time I can work on whatever projects I’ve got going. Animate a scene in a cartoon I’m making, record a demo for a song I’ve written, write a song, write a story I thought of while on my bike ride, etc. Creating will be my job. I wrote in my biographical sketch in August that I want to be an “idea man”- that’s what I’ll be doing. I’ll work on a project while planning out the next one in my head. The eight hours will go by fast- time always goes by fast when I’m working on something I’m excited about.

So I don’t know how much an idea man gets paid, but the only expenses I see having is rent and food. I’ve been perfectly comfortable living in half a 16’ x 10’ room for three months. I don’t need material things to be happy- I need to be creating.

So now that I have the vision for my happy life, why not go and start it? There wasn’t any part of that day that required a diploma. I’ve committed to finishing this semester of school because it’s already been paid for, and I’ve been getting good grades (which could be useful to transfer), but when it’s over in a month, what reason will there be then?

When me and my friend Darina skipped school secretly to go to a demonstration supporting free speech in Washington DC I was petrified. We made a film documenting the trip, and at the beginning we’re filling the car with gas a few miles from town and Darina asks me if I’m excited. “I’m excited- I’m so excited I kind of feel like throwing up a little bit”. I thought we were going to get caught, I thought my car was going to break down, I knew we were going to get lost. It was a bad idea, but I knew inside me it was right. I look back on it now as one of the best days of my life.

It was dangerous and exciting because it was the real world- we left the safety net of our families and our town. When we got back we kept it a secret, until one day I was too proud of myself. I told my parents and showed them the film.

The odd thing is, they were really proud of what I had done too. Every time we have company over at the house, they make me get my computer and show them the film. They told everyone about it. Whenever they bring it up, I ask them if they would have approved of me going if I had told them- and they absolutely would not.

What’s the worse that could happen if I set out on this ‘new’ life?

A Note on “Inevitable Progress”

If you read my essay “Inevitable Progress”, you won’t have a hard time finding the unsettling idea embedded inside it, that it isn’t in the interest of us as a species to heal the sick or help people. It isn’t (in the greater long term), but I’m not suggesting that’s a good enough reason not to do it. It’s certainly something interesting to think of. I’m convinced that a great crash is on the horizon for the human species and that at some point we’ll have to more seriously contemplate the issue. I think I’m going to begin working on a larger fictional story about this.