This is What We’re Going For…

Abby Whiteside’s pedagogical principles are best.

“…Just remember that MUSIC itself is spiritual, emotional, intellectual and physical. Music is vastly more multi-dimensional than WE usually ALLOW ourselves to be. That is why when we get INTO music, it is so gratifying on ALL levels. What you are doing is eliminating unrelated physical activity and distilling it to how the body really functions and how it relates in it’s dance with the piano. It may feel like “nothing is happening” but it is just a more focused physicality. Keep paying attention to how the music MOVES and it should guide you.”

John Kamitsuka

“Thirds”

This is an unfinished piece I was messing around with. Called “Thirds.”

Things I Would do Immediately After Getting Legit Money and Celeb Status

Assuming, of course, that after all this happens, I’m still retarded enough to stick around someplace that isn’t an island in the Caribbean (and it will happen. You doubters reading this now can go sit and visualize yourselves at some bar in the future, trying to mentally shrug off your mediocre lives), the first thing I would like to do is:

1. Get some of my friends to don SWAT vests, give them Airsoft guns, and drive with them everywhere in a giant obnoxious and polluting GMC Yukon XL 2500. That might sound kind of stupid, but its not, and here’s why:

Imagine pulling out of your gated mansion with a group of friends armed with guns that shoot orange plastic BBs. The things don’t maim, but they can really fucking hurt, especially when they are fired out of things that look like this, and super especially if its warm and your prey are wearing t-shirts. Who are the prey? Right, imagine the gate opening as you pull out, only to be greeted by a bunch of swarming idiots with cameras trying to get a sneak photo of the beautiful, intelligent, gracious – but paying homage to some curious recent trends – probably pantyless vagina owner that is sitting with you. They are surrounding your car, blinding you with their bulbs of fame’s acknowledgment, and making it really difficult to both move the car forward and suppress to urge run them over. I think the celebrities that are stuck in these situations probably respond pretty normally – with curses, rage, violence, umbrellas, etc.

Cue awesome group of friends jumping out of the Yukon with awesome plastic guns, and laying waste to these annoying, deeply flawed specimens of humanity with fancy cameras. Sure, they could press charges for “assault” or something whatever like that, but…well…sure, I’ve got money now right? HAHAHAHAHAH. Fuck them. Losers.

“Yup, you’re a real important person.”

Goddamn how we delude ourselves. That might be the most effective way to exist and accomplish stuff, deluding ourselves. How else can you possibly justify the triviality of your boring, retarded life? Do you not realize that no one cares? Not only that, but no one has EVER CARED. And not just that either. No. In the future, yes, that’s right, no one will care either.

Deluding ourselves to some extent is kind of healthy though, if you stop and think about it. Let’s say I have a great idea and am motivated to pursue it. Wonderful. I’m geared up and ready to fucking go. Let’s hit that shit. That’s hot.

“Oh but wait, why am I doing this again? To gain some sort of cosmic acceptance and meaning derived from deliberately ignoring the pointlessness of my life by simply spending time doing things…to take my mind off of aforementioned?”

Great. Sounds good, let’s get to it.

People Keep Emailing Me, asking for Long-Winded Diatribes That Go Nowhere

You may be one of the other lucky few early 20 somethings that wakes up facing at least 16 waking hours of open space. Its freedom, really, having that much time, and you can spend the entire time conceivably doing nothing, thinking about nothing, and thinking about doing nothing. This is also ample time allowable to contemplate the complete triviality of our lives and feelings. I don’t mean this in that pussified “my life is so sad and despicable and filled with despair and longing for better times,” kind of way. I mean I think its kind of cool, that whole acknowledgment that in 70 years, you can either have an impact on the people of the world, or not, and it won’t matter anyway.

There are a ton of really smart fucking people that have already lived, some were even nice enough to write down their thoughts and document things and pass it along the generations as screeds of wisdom, for the next set of intelligent animals to use to better themselves as they scrape along in their own lives, hopefully made easier and more manageable thanks to the ancients. But where are we now?

I’m not lamenting our situation – far from it. I try, but its pretty ridiculous to conceive of how much suffering and hours and thought came and went in the world to bring us to this point, where I can wake up, play with my computer, practice doing something artsy that might not make me money, ever, and still be okay. Thank god I have some sort of vague direction or goal. I can’t imagine what the fuck it must feel not like to have ANY idea what you like to do. Even if its completely pointless and stupid. We have lots of time.

So now what the fuck do we do? Its great having the casual luxuries unimaginable even a century ago. Civilizations have worked really really hard to bring us to this point, not without folly, not without collosal fuckups, but always aiming towards something vaguely better than what they had. In purely practical terms, two of those things were capitalism and the establishment of rule of law that permitted it to exist without deterioration into a clusterfuck of anarchists. Those two things have brought us more materials goods, and with them, the means for building better lives with more options, than anything else in history. What really bums me out is how quickly these ideas are being frittered away, power is being GIVEN to a governing body.

I don’t really care who is president, I don’t really care what defines a republican or democrat. What bothers me most is the quick deferrence and TRUST people seem to put into these governing bodies. I’m not talking about “who will do a better job? A conservative or liberal?,” I’m saying the concept of government as it handles large swathes of the economy – its a broken and outdated concept.

Its intuitive, I guess.

“We’ve got X problem and Y class of people with Z skin color are getting fucked. Bring in a group of smart, persuasive people to fix it.”

Done. Solved.

If it operated that simply, don’t you think the whole collectivist thing would have worked?

Take the inverse:

“We’ve got X problem and Y class of people with Z skin color are getting fucked. …So um, let’s leave it alone, let the incentives that have produced what we have so far remain intact, keep relying on selfish individuals to provide goods and services in exchange for money, let the thing build and our overall standard of living will rise and this will solve the initial X problem with Y class with Z color while making it unnecessary to infringe on the lives, rights, and personal ambitions of those who are NOT those people.”

In a fit of emotional rage,  which do you think would be taken seriously?

I guess the problem is psychological. One type of mind prefers to deal with things one way, and the other another way.

A mind that tends to prefer decisions to follow emotional reactions is often quick to side with the most persuasive, intelligent and moral sounding voice in the discourse. Somebody charismatic that can properly channel the basic and primitive emotions of gobs of people into something that may sound at once grand, beautiful, complex, and visionary. Somebody brilliant and sympathetic that can take the veneer of substance and wrap it around horseshit, essentially. At some level, they may literally believe that their personal degree of emotional investment actually validates their views.

“How can I be wrong if I feel so strongly about X and care so deeply?”

The other type of mind is reflexively distrustful of strangers that claim to operate for their, and others’ benefit without some sort of other motive. These types of minds may secretly want to believe and follow and be part of the crowd and fit in, but instinctively shy away from that. They spend most of their lives feeling like it is they, themselves, that are completely insane.

“Okay, okay…just shut up for a second. Let me think about this…”

They want to understand. Understanding the inner workings of something for them brings the same value as “belonging” and “being part of a larger purpose” does for others. It takes a lot of effort and mental stubbornness to not buy into the emotional, and it takes even more real physical effort to do the work necessary to understand what is really happening, why it might not be a good thing, and how to counteract it.

“The Last Psychiatrist”

Whomever happens to wander through this blog ought to know about another that I read and fucking love to death.

The Last Psychiatrist

Just read the entire fucking archive. Its all awesome. The really heavy chemistry related posts go over my head but the stuff about narcissism, and the inconsistencies and falsehoods masquerading as truths (those falsehoods often based on little more than the perceived “authority” of psychiatric specialists and doctors) within the psychiatric community – its all totally sweet.

Randoms

1.

“It might be nice to be the kind of person that other people wouldn’t feel threatened deferring their judgement to. People hate being told they are wrong. Be the kind of person people don’t mind being proven incorrect with.

Of course, this is easier when the person you are deferring your judgement to has some insanely precocious intellectual abilities that set them apart enormously from “regular” folks. Oddly enough, the mere existence of an incredibly huge “innate ability gap” will often make these regular folks feel unthreatened, because they now have a more legitimate excuse for their own failings (that being a lack of equivalent innate ability in some area), rather than having to muster up the self-awareness and ego blow of admitting their ideas are just retarded.”

2.

“If you think about sex a lot when you’re younger, can that trigger an earlier activated pituitary? Anybody?”

3.

“One of the things that is starting to amaze me these days is how utterly similar subjects/topics/areas of interest are. At some level in your growing expertise on a subject, you will begin to develop parallel conceptual relationships between the current subject at hand and the subjects you’ve already mastered. The single, most pervasive and common principle you will notice between these subjects, aside from the fact that they are hard to master, but that they are so insanely complicated that your budding intellect and its realizations will slowly make it apparent that you really don’t know even remotely little about the subject – or anything really.

Even after “mastering” the subject for practical purposes, you would have to essentially become god, with the ability to reach your tentacles of insight and understanding into every facet of existence. Or the universe, or something. And remember that the universe is expanding (last we checked anyway), and so this principle reaches infinity.”

4.

“…there is a dearth of people in power who understand the most basic principles of human freedom and the accompanying accountability. We focus on welfare now, admittedly a good thing, but often at the expense of maintaining economic freedoms and allowing them to raise the overal quality of life over time, which is ironically what helps the poor the most anyway.”

Brett Writes a Poem!

Tsk, tsk, mr dreary eyed hollow man

tough to keep up, huh?

that’s because you’re thin as air

the world will flash you by

with enticements and the glitz

keep buying your status

you’re fooling fucking no one

maybe if you’d comb your hair this way

that girl might see your edge

and if you amass lots of girls

they’ll all flock like birds

and show you more than tits

because if they only knew you

they would lose their minds

with that chimerical lust

or something

but they don’t,

“but its their loss” you say

sure it is

the same way their boyfriends

want to blow their fucking brains out

go out and take charge then

and remake the universe

as you see fit

or at the very least

pretend you live in that

alterable world

guided by your divine and unique insight

preferences, tastes, and goodness

now the image is complete

you are dr. tool-bag anonymous

go fuck yourself

and your too similar brothers of the world

Baby

I’ve been working real heavily with a concert pianist named John Kamitsuka for the last two and a half years, and in that time I’ve been slowly building up some classical material. Its gotten to the level where I’m almost ready to perform this stuff for real. What a weird feeling.

I’ve been hibernating like crazy on this stuff – not just on the ability to play the things, but learning about myself and my emotions and how to channel them effectively in each piece. When you’re the kind of person that typically distrusts any sort of emotional involvement in anything (for good reason sometimes), this is really fucking hard. I’ve had to stare down that part of myself that I’ve been afraid of all my life, that vulnerability. When you reach a certain level proficiently, the instrument starts to become your emotional voice – and with that comes the realization that, “oh shit, people can tell how I feel about things as I relate them to the notes. That makes me vulnerable and open to manipulation and unwarranted criticism.”

If you want to summarize everything I’ve been learning for the last few years, then you could put it this way – I’ve been learning how to not be such a pussy in music and in life. Nobody likes a pussy.

Brett Makes a Movie

This is my first video I’ve made through the site xtranormal. I hope you enjoy it: