Black Metal October

I figured I'd write a what's up, vlog-style post, considering I haven't written anything lately. 

The Holidays are here, and as a result, I've been working a lot at the retail gig. I'm doing a lot more daytime shifts, which are pretty tiring. However, a job's a job and everybody has to play his part, as they say. The hard-working proletariat never dies. But sometimes he gets stomped on. But that's subject for another discourse: The Dialectics of the Modern Proletariat, to be continued...

I've been reading nonstop, pretty hardcore actually. I read Colin Greenland's science fiction space opera Take Back Plenty, and then, on the recommendation from a friend I read Robert M. Pirsig's Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance. In between I read Wittgenstein's The Preliminary for the Philosophical Investigations, which includes his Brown and Blue books, notebooks for his friends and students in philosophy. Quite a stellar reading list if I may say so myself. I haven't written about any of these because in a way I'm still gathering my thoughts on them and in addition, I'm continuing to read so much more every day that it's hard to keep up, to put my thoughts on previous readings on paper, or in this case computer writing format. Now I'm reading Susan Sontag's Against Interpretation and Other Essays. After that, I plan on reading The Outsiders by Colin Wilson. Wow. "Gotta get down to it." 

I've also been chilling with my friends a lot too. We play a lot of Smash Ultimate. I don't really do any solo computer gaming anymore at this point. I've sort of given up on it because I don't get the same level of joy, excitement, or motivation to improve at video games anymore. The thrill is gone. Video games are important only in a superficial instant gratification sense, once you get past that, you realize that there's so much more Quality, gravitas, emotional content in music and literature. I could actually predict a time when video games become uninteresting and kids actually begin to lose interest, and start playing instruments and reading books. A utopian pipedream.

I'm also working more seriously on losing weight. My plan is to eat less. So far its been working. The great thing is that I'm a lot more alert and on the ball when I'm not overfed. It will probably take at least three months to see real results but already I know that I'm a lot quicker to the draw, especially at work. Who knows, maybe I can go from fat Buddha to skinny Buddha in this fashion? To sit under the Bodhi tree and only eating what is required and nothing more.

I haven't been playing as much guitar but I will probably play a bit tonight. I haven't played the keyboard in a while either but again, I'll play a bit tonight. The hardest thing about music is keeping up the practice. There's so many other goals and pursuits, its easy to put it off one day, then two, then three, etc. For me I notice that if I'm not constitently listening to music all the time then I won't practice guitar or keyboard either. Reading in silence becomes my music, and it is not a bad music either! 

I'm going to end with a nod to Halloween. Back in 2017 I wrote a black metal song entitled Spirits of the Dead, with my then current band. Check out the song on YouTube here. Yes, that is me on guitar and vocals LOL. Oh, to be a young metalhead. Also, its notable that I wrote the song on a gloomy rainy morning in Octobert 2017. I played the song at least ten times at open mics with Martin Arevalo, on drums. One time we got a very good lead guitarist to play lead for the song while I did rythmn and vocals, it's a killer recording.

Spirits of the dead!

Struggle and internal contradiction

Oh, that magic feeling...

Lately, I've been writing a lot of op-ed sort of blogs about life, my ideas, philosophy, my particular thought processes as of late, autumn 2019. Here's one for you: struggle and internal contradiction. 

A lot of my posts have been sort of feel-good type of things [you need to push yourself, keep going, don't quit, etc], and some of it has been sort of depressing to write about, yet also uplifting in a philosophical way, zen-like. 

There were some continuous themes. Getting older. Changes that weren't necessarily good or bad. But seem bad. Work getting harder, more physical. Being more tired. How do deal with all of this? Keeping your mindset strong rather than just positive.  Or strong and positive.

The thing about all that is that there are struggles and contradictions with regard to all of that. You have to be young to become old. If things didn't change you couldn't appreciate how good things really are/were. For work to become more difficult means you'd have to have had a much easier time at some point in the past. You have to have been full of energy [younger] before you realize you're getting more and more easily tired [older]. 

I might write/say/think one thing and yet may not completely mean it at that moment when proclaiming it. Does that mean that I really mean it? This goes into the analytical side of thought. [which is my true aim out of all these vlog type posts]  To question everything, even yourself.

Consider this: I've been more and more easily tired at work for no particular reason in particular. I was dead half my shift. Dead, as in not very responsive, overly tired, slow, prone to error. Yet, half-way through my shift today I came back from lunch and my attitude was completely changed. I was in the best mood I've ever been in at work. It manifested as me smiling a lot, laughing a lot with my co-workers, being very engaging with every customer. How does something like that happen? And how do you keep such an enlightened state going the next day, month, years, a lifetime? 

The answer could be whatever you make of it. Something just hit me, a pierce in the veil. Sitting under the bodhi tree. Could've been a result of a good lunch. Or a good reading session on said lunch. Realization of something that wasn't thought about consciously or self-consciously. Many things, one thing, or nothing at all. It's important to remember moments like these. It feels good and it was memorable work experience. I think even my co-workers noticed and reacted in kind. It was fun. Cheery. Jovial even. What do you do with this sort of realization? Anything or nothing at all I suppose. This goes to show [character] that a lot of our internal struggles and contradiction could, in fact, be something we can overcome, somehow, in our own way, on our own time, in our own condition. Perhaps I will meditate more. Ruminate on peace and love in the universe. Namaste.

Nowhere to go...

The End

And in the end...

A lot of times I think about the present and think about how it is the end. The end of what? The end of various things, from trivial matters to big, important matters. The end of a jam session, hard day of retail, a day off, a day, a year, a decade, twenty years, thirty years. A life.

I was pretty sad the other day when I found out that Ginger Baker, drummer for Cream, the second rock supergroup after the Beatles had died. He was eighty years old. He lived a full life. Yet it still got to me. Ginger has always been my favorite rock and roll drummer. Before he was in Cream, he played jazz and blues gigs with Jack Bruce. I've seen him on video playing very good straight-ahead jazz drumming styles, something akin to Elvin Jones, Buddy Rich, and Art Blakey, the best of the best in the genre. 

Ginger's death made me think of a lot of other things that have come to an end. My best friend at work got transferred to another store, a promotion for him. We still hang out but a lot less often because his work is a lot farther, and his hours have changed. On top of that, a very good friend of mine seems to be too busy to hang out. The solitude of my home life has been removed due to a new housemate. My attitude about playing open mics has changed. Sometimes I'm just not feeling it and end up not going after practicing said songs to be performed. What's the deal? 

Sometimes I even go to the extremes of going through all my intellectual reading pursuits, discussing it with people in public, and with friends, and think to myself, "What's the point? Will anyone ever care about Littgenstein's Brown and Blue Books? Heidegger's Being and Time? Descartes? The Tale of Genji? A Distant Mirror? Floating Worlds?" The obvious answer is that it might not matter if they don't care because I care, that's the only thing that matters in a sense. Of course I don't mean this in selfish way, rather, so many people are so intellectually bankrupt they wouldn't care to discuss philosophy or literature. But that's subject for another discourse. 

Things change. People change. We have to keep on going, moving on, keep on grooving. The road we travel is a solo path even if you have a wife or girlfriend. Friends are great company but I've found that most of my friends, who are mostly younger than me, are a lot more arrested than myself, meaning, that most of our hangouts consist of me babysitting in a way. It's a sad realization. At first it was, a farce, now tis but a tragicomedy. That's a Marx quote, one of my favorites. 

Now we get to the crux of the matter. Everything you love will be gone one day. Enjoy everything you can and live with no regrets. Even just living life one year ago with the different dynamics is something I miss dearly.

Everything changes but in the end the song remains the same.

Strawberry Fields Forever

Day by day, alone on a hill...

Each day passes us by. Sometimes we have bad days that sort of bleed into all the other days,  a sort of 24/7 existentialism. Because a happened yesterday it bothers us today, in addition to b being a problem today. What helps us cope with that? How do you focus more on the positivity of being, being in the worldhood of the world? 

Plans with friends get canceled somehow five times in a row. Work gets more strenuous. Time seems to be flowing faster and faster. Your relaxation time seems to be like work. [reading, writing, guitar playing becomes a second job because it is] Instead of doing the things you want to do you end up just sleeping. Everybody's laughing, everybody's happy. But here you are. 

The easy zen answer to all this is that every day is a new day. Tomorrow is only yesterday's tomorrow. But that does not mean that yesterday bleeds into tomorrow, today, the present, the past, or the future. I would go so far as to say that you're not even the same person today as you were yesterday. A multitude of factors determines this. But mostly chemicals in the brain. 

Come together. The more you want to drift off and sulk into your own self-pity and sorrow, you need always remember that there are still caring people in the world despite the pitiful state of affairs in the world. The more you can relate to everyday people the more you see humanity, peace, and love in others, and in yourself. Come together, yeah. 

Because. We feel sad, depressed, anxious, and tired because we are human rather than machines. That is why you must find all your favorite things and enjoy life. You must sit in self-reflection, ruminate on your ideas, thoughts, consciousness, and yet still engage in the world with real, everyday people, rather than sitting in isolation, as some sort of self-proclaimed hermit or yogi. 

The reason people are positive, give off good vibes, and are happy people is because they've been working at it. There is, of course, the rare person who is just happy no matter what happens in their life. No heartbreak will destroy them utterly nor completely. They are strong in mind, body, and spirit because they've been through the bad times and came out stronger in the end, with a stronger mindset, and/or spirit. It's a beautiful thing. It's a necessary thing. 

Let me take you down, 'cuz I'm going to...

Start me up

Lately, I've been blogging about ideas I've had recently. About ideas, life, philosophy, and such. Here's another one in that same discourse. We all have long periods where we are thriving and excelling at everything we do in life. And then finally it hits you. You run into a brick wall. What do you do? Here's what I think. 

I've been on a climatic high ever since the end of last year. I've really changed my outlook, my way of thinking, philosophy, and in a lot of ways I've become a better and more evolved individual. I'm pretty damn happy with myself. But then that brick wall enters your path, where do you go next? The brick wall hit me today when I was at work when I suddenly realized that I can't possibly keep going at the rate I'm going at my retail job. Working 430pm-1am 5 days a week. It can't possibly last. Either I must get a job that isn't as physical or just quit entirely. Then it hit me. What am I going to do? [existential heavy breathing] 

The easy answer is that I'm probably just overworked and need a week off [which I, unfortunately, can't afford to do]. Or that I just need to relax more and take a breather, play more guitar and keyboard [music saves the soul]. However, it is meaningful to actually think about it in a more serious format. Otherwise why bring it up?

Keep in mind that this question came out of the feeling that I just don't have it in me. Too tired to do the physical retail stuff anymore. Why is that? I was just tired. But was I really? Sometimes you have to question everything. Even yourself. 

This led me to a conversation I had with a friend of mine yesterday. I was walking somewhere and saw a friend and he gave me his philosophy on work and life. 

"It doesn't matter how many hours you work. You can work very little hours but as long as you get the money you need to pay for rent/housing/food, that's all that matters. Enjoy your life as much as possible."  

Obviously, this is coming from a guy who is unemployed so at the time I was skeptical. But the more I thought about it, the more I put credence into it. This goes back to my predicament. What do I do? 

Enjoy life, keep working, but don't work so hard, don't push yourself, don't break your back for lowly retail store directors. In the end, maybe being a socialist isn't so bad. [lol] Hell, even Yang's universal basic income is looking fantastic nowadays to me.

I don't know for sure but I believe the idea of working is changing in the postmodern technological age. It might be that people who hardly work because they're already rich, or people that are businessmen who only work sometimes during the week, it might be that they are the culprits, promoting the destruction of the middle class, forcing them into a life of work and servitude, when those people could enjoy more time with their significant other, friends, family, or in self reflection. Is it us versus them? Or is that what the world wants us to believe? As that one song from Broadway goes, "Is that all there is?"  

Start me up. 

The modern proletariat refuses to die.

Jazz instrumental Track

Here's an instrumental original track we recorded this past week. For lack of a better name, [but keeping the changes in mind], I've called it The Beautiful and Her Complications. The idea is using minor changes, resolving to major chords, and throwing in some dominant 7ths for flair, but of course, the theme is in a minor key. Enjoy. 

https://soundcloud.com/user-294063763/the-beautiful-and-her-complications 

Orlando Figueroa, Guitar
Jason Thomas, Alto Saxophone 

Gestalt

Lately, I've been thinking a lot about art, music, history, ideas, philosophy, zen, and the like. Almost a year ago I came upon the sudden realization that my focus was attenuated by my own distractions, resulting in poor work service and social skills among my friends and peers. Thankfully, I've been working on all that and things have been going swimmingly. You could even say people love me, even people who aren't my family or apart of my immediate friendship circle. I'm ready for the Orlando Fanclub LOL. 

In all seriousness, what I am truly talking about here is thinking processes on a metaphysical level. Gestalt actually. This is a German word for shape or form, and its the idea that systems and their properties should be viewed as a whole, not as loose collections of parts.

What really got me going with this was reading Heidegger's Being and Time, a book so immensely prolix that I'm not quite sure anybody who's read it quite understands it, or definitely doesn't understand all of it, but perhaps portions, or segments of it. Being and Time got me thinking about life metaphysically. What is life, what is being, what is time, what does it mean to be apart of the worldhood of the world? Etc. 

I've thought about these things as part of Heidegger's thought processes but that is too complicated to go into here [blog in the future incoming on that book], so rather I'll focus on what I think about these ideas. 

Life is the optimal persona [don't ask, its a California thing] of the soul, of a person, place, or thing. Being is the consciousness, so to speak, the thing that makes it a life plus everything else. This includes personality, physical, and mental traits of the person, and the way they make their thoughts process. Time is the standard measurement of life. To be apart of the worldhood of the world means to be a willing participant in the game of life, to want to be apart of social conventions. This includes work, friendship, family obligations, girlfriend, wife, kids, etc. Plato has different variations on these ideas, as does Heidegger.

My own thoughts on these ideas are simple, they're still valid still fair game. My thoughts on Being, or as Heidegger calls it, Dasein, has brought me to a new idea, a new way of thinking, thought processes. Basically, you don't have to think about your thoughts as being apart from each other. Rather, you can look at it as one entity. All your ideas could be thought of as one spontaneous act. Cycles of reality if you will. Your whole entire day could be thought of as one smooth motion rather than many different acts within 24 hours. That sort of thing. Frank Zappa had a word for this that I've since forgotten. But basically, he thought of all his recorded body of work, music, as one entity, rather than as individual albums or single inspirational moments. I'm thinking about daily ideas, activity, and thought processes in a similar way. 

This could also correlate to activities. You could do many things throughout the day with many different people, see a lot of places, do many things, and at the end of the day, you can look at it all as one activity, one single act of motion. 

I think about all this as cycles of reality, an idea I got ironically from a jazz song, from a modern jazz muso from New York, a drummer whose name I've forgotten. For me its a way of thinking in a more meta way, thoughts are more cohesive rather than random and disorganized. This isn't to say that all your ideas are related, rather when you think in this vast linear fashion, the worldhood of the world changes a bit, not it in itself, but rather the way you fit inside of it. It can come in handy sometimes when boredom is so ready at hand in the humdrum of everyday life. It connects everything together, you're more alert, so you don't look up and go, either in your mind or speaking to another person, "what?" 

What can I say? These Germans have me thinking metaphysically.