(chris’s) blog

With change comes insecurity. Losing a love can make the whole world appear hollowed. Progressing too fast in any direction is bound to leave you feeling farther from home. We have to learn to become comfortable with change, to become secure. Change is the essence of life.

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The idea that we are somehow all related through events, energy, or whatnot, that somehow a blanket envelopes us all in commonality, is an idea that has yet to reconcile what it means when one person has no empathy for another. If you see somebody smile and it doesn’t make you happy, how does that work?

Originally uploaded by omeyisland

We’ll excuse your late night phone calls,
Your notes put here and there,
And your lists–
And amid the stream of criticism going on in my head,
The slate is wiped clean suddenly
As you startle me.. I hope.

College smells mostly of beer and dish soap.

What do we do when we cannot do our jobs? I think maybe we’re told to do whatever we are asked to do, as well as we can, even if it is not our job. ” I want to paint!” ” This is History class, this is no place for painting. Do as you’re told!” I think that we ruin many a great artist and produce many a mediocre student.

And what’s worse is some of us don’t know what our jobs are. When are we to figure this out, between history and math? After P.E. or during the walk home from school?

Do you realize at one point in our evolution we were like little intelligent mice, burrowing and hiding in earthen caves? And here I am, in a house!

We live in a great age of plenty, one that permits easily for artisans. It may seem meager, the earnings of an artist who is not famous, but that is how most of them live, moving through life, searching for vindication. And how intelligent they are! Scurrying out of the caves, though on tiny incomes, and living their lives! Are they any less valid a human being, searching the world and their soul for the next thing to excite them, than a man in the city working a desk? He sits with his tie crumpled against the desk and wonders what he will eat for dinner, before watching television, falling asleep, and crumpling his tie again the next day. At least our artisan fails all routine and might stumble upon greatness.

I met a college student on the train. I tried to stare forward, confident his lean face and $50 haircut would leave me alone if I acted remote.

But our seats move together by design, propelled along tracks for miles. I found myself gesturing and speaking automatically. It’s a trait of introversion to feel like an actor in front of other people. Coincidentally, a lot of actors are introverted.

I remember clearly the laces of my shoes when I’m acting.

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When I read the words of others, I often skip words without realizing it. And at other times, depending on my mood, I’ll skip entire paragraphs of reading. When I don’t care to hear it, I’ll avoid noticing words coming out of mouths. If I grow bored with what somebody is saying, is that person boring or am I?

I’m going on the radio again to substitute for a friend who’s away on the east coast. Tune in from 3:00-4:30pm Pacific at www.kdvs.org (or 90.3 FM in the Sacramento/Davis regions) to hear the Senescent Spectacle. MP3s after the show…

My latest focus is on lucid dreaming. I’m unaware of its prevalence so pardon this introduction. We dream every night, even if you do not remember it. (It’s a fact that the area of your brain responsible for long-term memory is mostly dormant during sleep, hence your inability to recall your dreams.) Assuming you sleep 6-8 hours, you experience a handful of dreams in one night. Lucid dreaming, which has been the object of scientific inquiry since the 1960s, is essentially the ability to “wake up while dreaming.” You may have done this accidentally. By questioning whether or not you’re dreaming, it is possible to come into conscious awareness, and, in its end result, even control your dreams.
You may have already experienced this. It’s not too difficult to achieve lucid dreaming, although it’s unlikely to occur every night.
The first step in lucid dreaming is remembering your dreams. The easiest way to do this is to write down your dreams the moment you wake up. Keeping a dream journal, as a habit, trains your brain to recall your dreams, if only fragmentary. As an interesting note, the areas of your brain which are affected by REM (the sleep cycle in which dreams occur) are “wiped clean” by motor function, that is, by trying to move. When you first wake up, you’ll have a better ability to recall your dreams if you just lay there motionless. After you’ve recited as much as you can, reinforcing the details in your short-term (waking) memory, grab your journal and write down as much as you can.
If you can remember your dreams (and thus your lucid dreams), you can achieve a lucid dream every now and again by simply telling yourself you’re going to have a lucid dream. Much like anxious self-recital of a particular alarm time (”I have to get up by 4:00am to make it to the airport!”), your brain will somewhat respond to your own demand and this will increase your chances of lucid dreaming.
The only part now is to prevent yourself from waking up. The REM cycles right before you wake up, 6 hours into your sleep, are the longest and you can thus have dreams up to 45 minutes. Once you take conscious control however, you’re likely to wake up. Two simple methods have over a 90% chance of keeping you asleep: (in your dream) 1) try to spin yourself or 2) try to rub your hands together. Both of these will throw off your brain’s response to the feeling of your bed and help keep you asleep. Spinning is particularly helpful, because it encourages the REM cycle-part of the brain.
I’m no neurologist and I don’t professionally study dreams, but most of this can be found from a few hours of reading Google. Exciting!

The Animal Collective just released their latest LP, Strawberry Jam, on a new label and it’s quite interesting. The single off this LP is called Peacebone and it debuted in video form on YouTube. The rhythm track sounded familiar and it turns out I recorded an early version of Peacebone a little more than a year ago at Coachella 2006. Enjoy!

The video debut on YouTube:

Quick (and crappy quality) video I took of an early version of this single:

Oh, and I found out the immobility I feel about once a month when I fall asleep is called sleep paralysis. I remember being ten or so when it first happened and I thought I was going to suffocate; I think I was eighteen or nineteen before I stopped feeling anxious when it happened.

I dreamt I had been drafted for war, and that the first battle was in my backyard.

Somebody in the enemy’s line yelled, ” Does anybody know what time it is?” We had to start soon.

The first shot was fired - a tiny piece of metal, no bigger than a marble had punctured somebody’s skull and their body went limp and inanimate immediately.

My gun wouldn’t fire. Hadn’t they loaded it for me? I raced over to the supply area and found myself praying I wouldn’t get hit, standing exposed, waiting for our captain to help.

Once I figured out my gun, I aimed at the few remaining enemies left and fired. Most went down with one hit. Soon there were only two left. Nobody else was shooting them.

I aimed at one lady enemy’s head. ” Don’t kill me,” she said. ” I’m waiting for something.”

This didn’t make any sense so I shot her in the head. She looked like she was in pain, like her death might take a minute, so I shot two more times until she moved no more and was just like another rock on the ground.

I was shaking. I had just killed how many people? I couldn’t remember. I thought I could keep count. You should keep count of something important like that. Three maybe? I couldn’t remember.

I ran to my house, empty and dark and locked myself in my room. From my room I spyed in the hallway, a girl from my college classes, from my regiment: she was in a red sweatshirt and looked nervous. She was deserting.

I had forgotten that was even an option. Looking around my room I grabbed a handful of my favorite shirts but before I could find my wallet and a backpack and make it out the window, make it for Canada, I woke up.