Cajoling the Archetypes

This is another day. This is your brain on empty. This is your body begging for a vacation. This is your conscious self saying "no". This is the day that rain makes heavier. This is the day your inner Icarus is vanquished by vanity. This is the day that your moratorium on wishing goes into effect. This is the second time you've told yourself this. This is the re-run of the pantheon of failure in your mind. This is the finger and that is the knife. This is the blood oath: run, baby. Run.

The Artist's Misaligned Priorities

The delirium has passed and been replaced with mismanaged idealism and a hope for a career as something I'll have to try hard at. Now that clearer and, dare I say, prettier heads prevail in the land of Ego and Id the combination of vanity and desire snuggle close once more and beg me to pursue the course ended with a red couch and addiction. Once a month these feelings surface and I never act on them. I never book a show, restring my guitar, write a new song or even consider taking a chance. This breaks my heart. Once a month my heart is broken. The mistakes recorded replay and it always strikes me that that part of me might only be on life-support but still has big lungs. Rembrandt reclining. Graham grousing. Folds folding. Jim jittering.

Friendshiftlessly

Without surprise, maybe, I've become accustomed to the fact that those people I once counted as my best friends are now, in fact, more like acquaintances. They are people you call when you're in town to catch up or drunkenly text at 3 a.m. when your girlfriend is sleeping and doesn't want to be bothered. These are not the people you hang out with because they live in other cities. These are not the people you talk to because they dislike talking on the telephone. These are not the people you email or Facebook message because you feel that that is an even sadder transmission of emotion. These are the people, however, that you have in your wedding party. Why? Because no one else has even come that close to making you feel loved in that way before or since and you need their acceptance of your marriage whether they like it or not. No nostalgia monster here... just a final realization that my circle of friends needs to grow outside of those who once loved me fervently in the hopes that I can get around to learning to love again.

Instinctaphobiac

And just around the bend form this particular stretch of mediocre highway is the happy open ground of brilliant success. And where is the light? Where is the light? Show the ocean to be where it is! Blend all of your realities into one phantasmagorical lust-fest. Give me the heartache, the joy, the unrelenting sting of failure's breath. Give life to heavy emotions. Employ whatever potions must be used to give weight to experience. I am an un-illuminated iron-barred vessel to hold the soul in. Seek we the cracks. Hold hands and slip through. Hold hands and transcend.

Juxtapomorphosis

The time traveler set his heels down again, this time in the Bay Area, attracting what may amount to some modicum of success. His feet dirtied by thousands of miles wandered, mostly in aimless circles and always with an antipathy toward the ideals of his forebears; namely the idea of settlement, offspring, creationism and keeping one's imbibing at a minimum. The coolness of ice in a glass not withstanding, some of the former parental partialities have crept into his frontal bit of gray matter. Is it aging, or merely a hormonal imbalance of some sort that leads the structurally disinclined to roots? The wanderer blames time, blames the inevitability and desperation of approaching death, despite its surprising distance from the present. I think it might be all of those chemicals in our drinking water and wonder how to go about contacting the EPA. Industrial waste is causing maturity.

Corporatocratization

Today the Federal Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia ruled in favor of Comcast in a suit against their restriction of bandwidth for specific websites in breach of a widely-held belief among internet users of "net neutrality". The NY Times reported that the Appellate Court found that the FCC had no legal recourse to restrict internet provider's own restrictions of their networks. Users of BitTorrent sites, YouTube and Hulu can expect slower download times in their future and, once the Comcast takeover of NBC is complete, the inevitable slowing of content downloaded from competing network's websites. The real bitch of it is that such an action on the part of Comcast would be completely within the scope of the legal precedent set by the Appellate Court's ruling. Net Neutrality takes a nose-dive. Next stop, paying more for a "high-download" account! Go fuck yourself, Comcast.

Sophistique

Recently there has been a preponderance of evidence heaped at my door that clearly shows that I am, in fact, nowhere near as young as I once was. This may come as a shock to some, but I am god-damned near to 30 years old. Despite this fact, until recently, I viewed myself in the same physical light as when I was 20. This was a period in my life when I was running five miles a day, a vegetarian, a teetotaler and a non-smoker. I somehow did not notice the gravity of time having rendered my lovely figure into something more becoming a 45-year-old man. I think I may be developing bitch-tits and my love handles have become more like love overhangs. My lack of physical prowess has become most evident in the way my lungs handle stairs these days. When I was younger, taking the stairs when the escalator was out of service on the T back home was no big deal; a minor inconvenience at worst. These days, I find myself trudging up the stairs in the SF underground like an octogenarian on a treadmill. The worst part is that I recently gave up smoking for the fifth time in my life and no longer have their carcinogenic toxins to blame for my muscular fallibilities. I would that I had some other thing to blame than myself and the increasingly sedentary lifestyle I've become accustomed to, which is why I am blaming my aging and not laziness. I suppose this reflection has helped me clarify some things to myself but probably has given no sort of edification to anyone reading this. But there are 75-year-old marathoners and someone's got to get something out of this ambling passage and it might as well be me.

Marshalling Waltzes

Lately, affinities for albums have completely consumed me. I have become unable to listen to single tracks from discs, instead indulging my senses in a thorough drenching of some artist and producer's vision. It's become a compulsion, actually. This can get annoying when I have shit to do. And it also has other pitfalls, not the least of which is that most artists are incapable of an excellent front-to-back album. Many have throwaway songs strewn throughout the whole thing and those flakes of crappy pepper seem to sometimes ruin the dish. Call me an elitist, but "Blond Over Blue" is a steaming pile in the middle of what otherwise is a decently solid album, Mr. Joel. This predilection narrows my available list of listenable albums to about 20. Hopefully my fixations and compulsions will undergo a sea-change in the near future and I can, once again, listen to my iPod on shuffle.

The Hypocrisy of Now.

Each hour of the day brings with it another completion of a cycle that began fifty-nine minutes earlier and with it comes new perspective. Time to stand up from the computer and stretch, see things differently than the hours past; fewer minutes until quitting time; fewer days until the weekend; fewer weeks until vacation. We pour our hearts into the moments that come next like our jobs were to be ewers for the soul-collectors and our time immortal. Our atoms will leave us as quickly as they came and without remorse. We should follow the flood plains of ions and dam our mouths to thwart time. And while we're out we should, perhaps, see the world.

Propheteering.

While at first blush it may seem like a good idea to predict what will happen in one's future, I am finding more and more that accuracy in such adumbration is god-damned near impossible. That said, I have been dreading the reception of an acceptance or denial letter from UC Berkeley that is to arrive in the next several weeks. These feelings are supposed to be over and done with by the time one is 19. I have the lucky exception to be experiencing this at the tender age of 28. So, the prognosticating part of my psyche is up to his old tricks and is raking my inner child across the proverbial coals; telling him that his proposed failure to gain acceptance to the University is not only inevitable but a further example of his inability to succeed at anything he tries. My psyche is a bastard. How could it possibly know what the outcome of this event will be? Psyche not psychic. This is the same part of my brain that said I would never own a house or quit smoking. It also predicated that John Kerry would somehow overcome his insatiable thirst for boring people into comas to get elected. Obviously I shouldn't listen, but the voices can get loud.

The Default Position

The mornings lately all seem melded, actually somehow regenerating nightly into the same amalgamated mess of bran muffins, bananas and a race for the shower, train and priority seating. Gather strength for the battle of brain-robbery. The suck-out of all will to press on wrapped up in the too-tightly bound pants I swore fit last week. Fluctuations of weight, ego and facial hair. Where is the supposition come from that I'm to do fine? What message does it send to the rest of the mind when the cortex can't keep us standing... Medulla Oblongata makes a stand in the evening hours before dreams end; wake to muffin-tipped tongue.

Considerations.

It occurs to me that, pretty much, everyone I know has a life plan; a goal that they are reaching for. Some seek to have babies, marry, raise pets, start a pyramid scheme. Others are looking to do things like buy houses or refurbishing old cars or finally have that sex-change they've been dreaming about since they were nine. As for me, I pretty much have one dream: I want to be a professional nothing. I want to be paid to merely be in the presence of people. I want people to pay me because I am just that rad. This is exemplified, primarily, in my current second-life as a studio musician/songwriter. I want to be paid to do something that takes little to no effort from me. While this may sound lazy and even moderately like stealing, I must ensure you that it is more along the lines of bribery than anything else. The people that hire me know that I can sing pretty and write lyrics that don't sound like they came off of the back of a box of Lucky Charms and so bribe me to do that in front of a microphone or onto a piece of their letter-head. It just so happens that I wind up being lucky enough to be able to accomplish this feat with about 1/4 of my mind's available RAM. I am pretty much a dick and vain for even posting this. God, why do I even try. Maybe I should start working on my hobo poses and wino-biceps cuz this certainly can't last. My being gainfully employed and working in music, that is.

Jim VanNest, Studio Musician

Jim VanNest, Studio Musician!!!

So, I've become a studio musician. It's true. I've decided my new calling in life is to sing background vocals and write melodies for other people. This sounds like a cop-out, but I am totally excited!

I am still living in Boston and working for jets.com.

You should visit my website: http://www.jimvanest.net

Decimals and Db.

I often wonder what I am cut out for. I mean look, just look at all of these skinny, be-acne'd little boys and girls running around the campuses of Harvard and MIT, slowly working their way into the world of finance and geo-politics and cancer research; and what the fuck am I? I am the guy who is going to ahve to depend on these societal rejects to make sure my liver and my bank-account don't give out before the other third come for their back-taxes! Who am I then? Am I the musician, the artist, the poet, the slut, the tubby guy, the anorexic, the chain-smoker, the pot head, the alcoholic, the carcenogenic martyr or some sort of exotic fruit bat? What the fuck? Identity crisis? I wish! I don't even know whta an identity is!

Piss.

-jim

Owl, meet Rabbit.

Winnie the Pooh left the forest for an hour to get groceries...

The Falsity of Reality.

I am going to be on a reality television show. I am not kidding. People usually talk about how they would like to be stuck in a million dollar loft with eight other people or trapped on an island for three months, but I am going to do this. I am privately auditioning for Simon Cowell's new project "America's Got Talent" - which is the worst title ever, by the way - playing guitar and singing pretty. So, come Monday morning I will be standing in front of some quack-assed panel of 'celebrity' judges who will berate me and make me sign a waiver so they can put my visage on the air waves at high frequency. If I succeed in the audition, I will be in L.A. all summer long. If not, you will see me on the "disaster" reel. Sigh. Life comes down to these moments of "what the fuck, man?!?!" way, way, way too often.

Fuck...

Blogs suck.

What's the point? This service blows. Blogger blows. You probaby suck too.

Eat a dick.

Love,

Jim

Amphibious Assault

So, a couple hundred hours down the drain and I am flying, waiting for something interesting to happen. It never does and I innevitably will watch re-runs of shows I am not entirely fond of. A perfect example is the rather uninteresting and simplistic plot development and shoddy acting in a little show called Dharma and Gregg. The particular installment I watched after class today dealt with the birth of Dharma's little sister. She goes home to her parent's geodesic dome and takes care of the baby and cleans the house and eventually she gets fed up with doing all of the work. Pap. Pap, pap, pap, pap, pap. I can't believe that crap ever made it into prime time. And I sit, bored. Blah, blah, blah.

One New Thought

I'm busy these days with school and recording, gigging, friends and my girlfriend. Things take a lot of time to accomplish in grown up world and I have become wary of anyone who says it is different. This said it should become apparent to anybody who bothers to read this sorry excuse for a blog why I haven't written anything on it in months. So, I am sorry for letting the one of you down. Also, I have begun a quest for knowledge recently which has led me into books about truth and classes like the "Philosophy of Religion." Mostly it has just led me into the livingroom to watch TV or play "Samurai Warriors" on Playstation 2. Bleah.

Life begins at thirty and you start dying the minute you're born. So where does that leave me? Half way between birth and 'life' and always, always ticking down the minutes to demise.

Bummer.

Love, Jim.

Gender Specific Night-time Tragedy

There is one stretch of road that lies between them. The steering wheel gives a little into the curves of the road and suddenly the whole damn thing gets clearer. There is a reason for the yelling. There is a reason for the verbal flaying and the constant badgering of his mind to do the right thing. There was a leather-faced former general and his minions burning neat little military sized holes in his already torn pockets and then, then the flash came over him, like he could feel their torches catching the threads of his jeans on fire. The hands he controlled and the mind -most of the time- was controlled by a lack of motivation and general longing for death. He'd never take his own life - too selfish- but would never take to mind a great deal the prospect of some horrible contagious disease to help him finally find justification for laziness in illness. The hours of sitting on the couch or in a hospital bed watching television. Hours of the West Wing and Columbo reruns. Hours of beautiful solace and freedom. The catheters couldn't too horribly, he had figured. It seemed to him that it couldn't hurt more than getting kicked in the nuts and he is only just south of right. Relinquishing all need for control he let go of the steering wheel and the car leaned it's way into the next lane. ...This is oncoming traffic... The lights grew heavier in his eyes. ...This is the part where the horn sounds loudest... And then a very loud noise, and then a very quiet noise.

Who knew that Swedish cars would work so fucking well? The whole thing, his accident had suddenly become a farce complete with big, flabby bags of air hurled in their faces like the proverbial pie. She didn't die. He didn't understand, he thought she hadn't been wearing her seatbelt and know she was very breathing and very crying and very disoriented. He just needed his one favor from whoever was getting his soul and he'd be golden. Now, instead of dead, alive... She'll ask about the accident. ...This is the sound a head being smashed against the broken door sounds like... His hands were now- what? - covered in her blood. He began to well up tears in his eyes and stroked the body's now very, very dead face. The man in the other car got out just in time to see him not killing, but holding the woman in his arms.

He managed to clamor from the wreck with the help of the TV repair man he'd just so recently nearly killed and leaned on his knees, realizing his breathing was rushed, like he was extremely excited. ...Your knuckles get white when you're nervous and remember to not look happy...

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