Eternal Breach

stoopspeabody: flowerspower: Trane Rare photo, makes me...

Sun, 19 May 2013 00:49:18 -0400

flowerspower:

Trane

Rare photo, makes me smile.

The people who have taught me about jazz have said if I...

Sat, 18 May 2013 23:47:29 -0400

The people who have taught me about jazz have said if I don’t transcribe this, I’m doing myself a disservice. They are absolutely right.

The sad truth is, I don’t know too many animals that...

Sat, 18 May 2013 23:38:39 -0400

The sad truth is, I don’t know too many animals that wouldn’t have that look on their face to the right if they were between Ryan Gosling’s legs.

Finished Reading: The Painted Bird by Jerzy Kosinski

Sat, 18 May 2013 23:36:39 -0400

This book came with a warning:

Dear reader,
This book is extremely graphic.I give you this warning because I wish someone had warned me.

I am glad I received this warning. As far as Post WWII fiction goes, I haven’t read much describing the events that occurred in a fictitious setting.

Kosinski has slowly become one of my favorite writers after having read Steps and The Devil Tree. The Painted Bird was Kosinski’s first novel. If you have a chance, I would read up on the history surrounding the novel’s origins and what happened after it was published and released. There is a ton of discussion on plagiarism, but nonetheless, the book is a great work and strong pull in the world. For the sake of time here, I’m going to say that Kosinski wrote the book, whether that is true or not.

This book in no way attempts to sugar coat the events of WWII nor the people in it. What is looked at through this book very specifically are the lives of those who were either stranded or tried to escape the grip of concentration camps during the period. The novel’s protagonist spends a great deal of time away from his parents who abandon him in hopes that he will be safe. But the things he experiences along the way are graphic and demonic, awful and in some ways probably the worst atrocities one can imagine being acted on one human being from the mind/body of another.

Kosinski writes with a sensitivity and detachment that makes novels known for their gore seem “PG” in a way: I’m talking about things like Haunted by Chuck Palahniuk and American Psycho by Bret Easton Ellis. The things I read in this book cannot be unread and I suppose it depicts very clearly the truth of how we can really dehumanize one another to the fullest extent, whether it be in war itself or on the sidelines.

I highly recommend reading this one despite whatever controversy follows it.

Audio

Fri, 17 May 2013 12:37:55 -0400

"ADHD is a fictitious disease"

Fri, 17 May 2013 12:34:39 -0400

“ADHD is a fictitious disease”

- Remember, there are two ways drug companies can make money:

Invent new drugs

Invent new diseases already invented drugs can treat

In the past decade or so, Big Pharma has created less than 10 new novel drugs per year.

As an example of Big Pharma inventing diseases is “short, normal” children. We can treat “short, normal” kids with human growth hormone and make them “normal.” For parents who want tall or “normal-sized” children, they can inject their kids with growth hormone on a regular basis. When I worked with Nader at his group, Public Citizen, in 2006, I wrote a petition to the FDA to ban human growth hormone on the newly approved disease, “short, normal” children because we identified about 10 reported cases of “short, normal” children who had died from complications of receiving human growth hormone.

Leon Eisenberg, “The Father/Inventor Of ADHD”, on his deathbed

Too many people tell me that they suffer from ADHD when, to me, they suffer from the consequence of bad design. Are you familiar with the Social construct theory of ADHD?:

ADHD as a social construct [edit]

Psychiatrists Peter Breggin and Sami Timimi oppose pathologizing the symptoms of ADHD. Sami Timimi, who is an NHS child and adolescent psychiatrist, explains ADHD as a social construct rather than an objective ‘disorder’.^[5] Timimi argues that western society creates stress on families which in turn suggests environmental causes for children expressing the symptoms of ADHD.^[6] They also believe that parents who feel they have failed in their parenting responsibilities can use the ADHD label to absolve guilt and self-blame. A common argument against the medical model of ADHD asserts that while the traits that define ADHD exist and may be measurable, they lie within the spectrum of normal healthy human behaviour and are not dysfunctional. However, by definition, in order to diagnose with a mental disorder, symptoms must be interpreted as causing a person distress / espec. maladaptive. In America, the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual (DSM-IV) requires that “some impairment from the symptoms is present in two or more settings” and that “there must be clear evidence of significant impairment in social, school, or work functioning” for a diagnosis of ADHD to be made.

(via kenyatta)

ryandonato: Artists in their studio Jackson Pollock studio,...

Fri, 17 May 2013 12:12:00 -0400

ryandonato:

Artists in their studio

Jackson Pollock studio, ca. 1950, Springs, Long Island, New York

Claude Monet ca. 1924 in his third studio, Giverny

Roy Lichtenstein, studio, Southampton, New York

Pablo Picasso, not listed.

ethereo: Blazing Reflection by ~FlorentCourty Earth shatters,...

Fri, 17 May 2013 11:47:15 -0400

ethereo:

Blazing Reflection by ~FlorentCourty

Earth shatters, rivets of water burrow into crevasses amassed by years of erosion, the tide low and way out. It is as though you could walk on water if you still had feet, if you weren’t still atoms drifting in the wind. You remember this feeling at just a year old, looking out into the distance from your crib. Everything seems like water, you define as you get older. This is your first memory and somehow, standing there near the ocean, you feel like you are right back where consciousness began. Is this what memory is: a tide of feelings and images washed upon the shore?

Also.

Fri, 17 May 2013 11:11:37 -0400

Also.

My daily bread and butter.

Fri, 17 May 2013 11:03:01 -0400

My daily bread and butter.

How Good Things Come (Pt. 2)

Fri, 17 May 2013 00:30:04 -0400

In a perfect world, business wouldn’t be a part of music and music wouldn’t be a part of business. But the problem therein lies withing the financial sector of music and how musicians can live without making money. Fact is, they can’t really.

I am blessed in so many ways right now, mainly that tonight I was more than floored by an experience I was more nervous for than I have been in a while. I performed with Paul’s Idea, a jazz group from Orlando run by a friend of the same name who plays trumpet. He invited two saxophonists to the gig to play the night, which initially (before knowing who they were) made the keyboard player, drummer, and me quite upset. It turns out, however, he somehow managed to get the two best saxophonists in Florida (in my humble opinion). Their first names are Jose and Miguel and for the sake of another post, I’ll refrain from using their last names.

Anyway, we begin the gig and things start off well with some sensitive playing, smart playing, and great communication happening in the band. All of this is taking place inside of a restaurant, not a night club or anything, but a jazz-themed restaurant. So we’re trying to keep it cool. But what I know of Miguel is this sort of God-like respect I have for him as a person and a player. When I first heard him play, we were at a jazz festival featuring six or seven bands consisting of young musicians from the area. Miguel was the first person to solo in the festival over “Survival of the Fittest” and I swear to God his first five notes made the audience scream with excitement. No one in that audience—I’m not sure any jazz audience either—knew exactly what in the hell he played or why it initially sounded so cool (for you jazzers, imagine if Chris Potter on some sort of steroid… which is almost impossible to physically do). Miguel asks to play some burning tune at the end of our first set, I think it was “Byrdlike” (the whole set became a blur of burnin’ jazz and super-out funk). It made me realize that every notion of my abilities as a performer had at some point been shot down in a negative way.

In trying to think of how to describe this, imagine working really hard at sculpting and having a teacher who keeps saying you are almost there. Or a personal trainer who keeps saying, seriously, five more pounds, you can do it. That was some of my music experience in college, which can be highly negative. Playing with Miguel, Jose, Paul, Nathan, and Carey was way more than I ever expected. It was intense, it was exhausting (in the sort of sense where you actually play like yourself, not like you’re wanting someone to hear), and it was real. All of the guys in the band were truly kind afterwords, parting and saying kind things about each other. I felt pushed in a real sense, like seeing the level to which this music could go. I watched several people who just came into the restaurant get up and excitedly say how happy they were to hear something so highly developed. This kind of stuff makes me want to practice, to improve, to be playing with people at this high a level all of the time.

"All this might have been wonderful if, at every stage, you had been able to play it as a game,..."

Thu, 16 May 2013 12:45:06 -0400

“All this might have been wonderful if, at every stage, you had been able to play it as a game, finding your work as fascinating as poker, chess, or fishing. But for most of us the day is divided into work-time and play-time, the work consisting largely of tasks which others pay us to do because they are abysmally uninteresting. We therefore work, not for the work’s sake, but for money—and money is supposed to get us what we really want in our hours of leisure and play. In the United States even poor people have lots of money compared with the wretched and skinny millions of India, Africa, and China, while our middle and upper classes (or should we say “income groups”) are as prosperous as princes. Yet, by and large, they have but slight taste for pleasure. Money alone cannot buy pleasure, though it can help. For enjoyment is an art and a skill for which we have little talent or energy.”

- Alan Watts, The Book on the Taboo Against Knowing Who You Are (via wellareyou)

Just eatin’ breakfast… in women’s sunglasses.

Thu, 16 May 2013 08:56:58 -0400

Just eatin’ breakfast… in women’s sunglasses.

within-behind-beyond-above: Hands-on V (2011) by David Agenjo

Wed, 15 May 2013 17:45:06 -0400

within-behind-beyond-above:

Hands-on V (2011) by David Agenjo

How Good Things Come (Pt. 1)

Wed, 15 May 2013 13:20:58 -0400

Openness. I used to think it was a joke. “Just be open to all possibilities and life will give you tenfold.” Turns out, people aren’t kidding. Literally trying anything without the preconception of it being a “bad thing” is blessing.

Last night, I was invited to sit in and play “Fire” by Jimi Hendrix at the Blue Martini in Orlando. I thought at first me being there was going to be a joke, since the Blue Martini is known as this kind of middle-aged locale for business types. But I was accepted with open arms and asked to come back, play some more tunes next time, possibly a sub position if I came back enough and played well enough. That sounds like more than a fair trade: good musicianship=good company=a good band.

As for writing, my final semester resulted in a chapbook being “published” under my name. If anyone would like a copy, I can work on making that happen. Three of my pieces—“Circuital,” “Removed,” and “Now”—were revised and featured. I had not been a part of the editing process in bulk before, but it was quite nice to work with one of the greatest editors I think I’ve ever been in touch with and hope to keep in touch with. Which brings me to the point that great writers make great editors as much as great readers make great editors. Things I learned: 1) Just because a sentence “sounds great” doesn’t mean it makes sense or should be a kept. Learn to kill your darlings. 2) The simpler the language, the better. Unless, unless, unless your grasp on grammar is highly advanced in certain places. Basically, pacing is everything. You can write long sentences, but they have to make sense orally or they won’t make sense internally. And the more of them you have, the more you have to look at how they serve their place in a paragraph. Again, structure and grammar are everything. But simpler is better, especially at first. 3) Structure means absolutely nothing if the characters aren’t there. Also, plot serves the characters in literary fiction, otherwise, why bother? If something seems out of place, it probably is. 4) What you think is great and what is actually great sometimes is not the same bag. Learn to kill your darlings. I’ll say that a million times. 5) The minute you are clever, you are dead, your writing is dead, you might as well still be in school. The only thing you prove at that point is how well you trick the reader, which is self-righteous bullshit. 6) If endings are clean, they are probably wrong. The more you wrap things up, the less the story has to actually say. No one is totally resolved in real life, so why should something in fiction be?

awlivur: “not-fish and not-blood” I’m the fury….

Wed, 15 May 2013 01:57:52 -0400

awlivur:

“not-fish and not-blood”

I’m the fury….

Photo

Tue, 14 May 2013 17:15:17 -0400

I suppose it isn’t a joke when a piece of mine is featured for the first time. Thanks, tumblr....

Tue, 14 May 2013 13:16:38 -0400

I suppose it isn’t a joke when a piece of mine is featured for the first time. Thanks, tumblr. for your support. I’ll keep writing.

Man, the groove here is impossibly deep. I love this. Thank you.

Tue, 14 May 2013 10:28:59 -0400

Man, the groove here is impossibly deep. I love this. Thank you.

The Alpha Fever

Mon, 13 May 2013 23:52:54 -0400

yen-yaw:

You know it is one of those “Alpha” neighborhoods where people parallel park next to the businesses, where you can eat at an Italian Bistro—or the Subway across the street if you’re obviously not from around here— or get a fake tan next to the nail salon across the way from the jeweler’s right next to (not so much “consequently” as much as “predestined”) the bank where men in pleated pants or khakis walk in and out all day. Despite the love-bug Florida weather, all cars seem to be nearly spotless unless they are utility vehicles or driven by folks in their nineties or driven by you, the outsider. Everyone here presents a dog of some sort: not that these people would be walking the dog, but primping and entertaining the casual idea of owning a pet who shits and sniffs it later or pisses on the kitchen floor and licks it up—whereas a normal person like you knows these things, these people yank their dogs as they sniff curiously at sparse and sometimes emaciated artificial patches of grass here and there.

People look at you oddly as you write on your notepad. You observe. They scratch their goatees and feign preoccupation on their latest Smartphone, tugging uncomfortably at their collars and readjusting the pair of sunglasses perched on the crown of their heads. Women walk by briskly listening to pop chart hits on mp4 players loud enough to deafen children—children who scream as they walk and drop things or trip with futility over their feet and wail with a fully and exaggerated sense of fear that this pain is unrelentingly personal and dark and will last forever. These women have strange, breast-enhancing shirts made for running, copacetic enough to quell the bounce of their strut in designer running shoes from the emporium you know is down the street—you saw on your way in—and know you can’t afford.

The coffee you bought is made with a fancy triple-strainer. You don’t believe this even when you see it. First, the beans are ground and strained with water. Second, the coffee-like liquid collecting below is moved to another strainer after taste and aroma is dissected from the grounds. Finally, a third shift moves the liquid through white, translucent paper to sort out the obvious and residual bitterness of the coffee legion you’ve been so well accustomed to for most of the twenty-two years of your life at four dollars a pop. The thing that occurs to you as you take it for the small price of five dollars is the sort of professionalism and time and care it takes to make something like this, something small and dinky and borderline pathetic in size compared to the large “small” versions of things you are used to drinking. The first sip is the first sip of your generation, of your adulthood coming to fruition. You’ve traveled to a place you know nothing about: a place of finesse and expediency, of utter unconscious localization of those dividing themselves entirely from a world of less-than-fine taste and less gourmet attitude. The taste buds in your mouth become activated for the first time, their space which never before has been touched this way, and you come to terms with the fact of every cup of coffee you have ever tasted up to this point has been burned, incinerated. The gluttonous and completely primal ingestion of sugar that followed became a total disregard for your heart because someone didn’t work hard enough to make the thing you are drinking now taste decent. The taste is bold and authentic. You know it will be hard to repeat this sensation.

Despite the disillusioned circumstances that have brought you here, you feel absolutely in-tune with this bourgeois meta-culture of monetary and uninspired value. The conscious decision to object and be abject to the make-up and pampering of every male and female and dog in this area—despite everything you feel and know to be true—is stopped by your coffee. Much like a love potion, it quells your angry and upset feelings of virtue, subdued entirely by a place casually tattooed and littered with cigarette smoke; the black and onerous taste of your first, no-so-good cup of coffee pasted and dragged across your tongue begins to fade.

Business meetings take place next to your bench and legal pad of paper. Children are carted and shopping bags are swayed from side-to-side at eleven AM despite all reason against it. You felt like an outsider before. Now, you feel no more indifferent than a potted plant as part of the architecture of this niche. This street sighs as cars pass. The intersection reads “New Bounds St.” and “Prospect Circle.” A dog licks your toes as you stare ahead into a woman’s hair. You look at her, bound on the other side of the dog’s leash, and she says, “He must like you.”