what beast would turn its life into words?

i had to share this post. i officially declare it Required Reading if you know someone who lives with a mental illness or a personality order. (which you do if you are reading this post right now, so HAH THAT MEANS YOU HAVE TO READ IT. YOU HAVE BEEN COMMANDED BY THE CRAZY.) (also, you probably also know someone who is not me with a mental illness or personality disorder, even if you don't know it, just 'cause statistics say so. WE WALK AMONG YOU.)

1

The story of the end, of the last word
of the end, when told, is a story that never ends.
We tell it and retell it--one word, then another
until it seems that no last word is possible,
that none would be bearable. Thus, when the hero
of the story says to himself, as if to someone far away,
"Forgive them, for they know not what they do,"
we may feel that he is pleading for us, that we are
the secret life of the story and, as long as his plea
is not answered, we shall be spared. So the story
continues. So we continue. And the end, once more,
becomes the next, and the next after that.

( MEBBE MR. VONNEGUT SHOULD'VE PUBLISHED HIS WHOLE BOOK VIA WORDLE.COM? )

...all geeky humor aside, hello, f-list. how are you all doing this on this lovely sunday eve? (OH MY GOD IT'S SUNDAY FUCK ME UP THE ASS WITH A TEXTBOOK WHY AM I ON LIVEJOURNAL)

it'd be nice if this post were one of substance, right? well, it ain't. i debated with myself (...and i won!) about whether to keep it private, but nah, i'll leave it public in case anyone's interested.

right, this is just a run-of-the-mill, maintaining-my-lj organization post. i'm putting all the communities i evidently "follow" on filters so i can actually keep up with them, and i'd also like to see it all laid out in one post in front of me. just 'cause i'm neurotic like that. well, all right, maybe i can't pin this one on neurosis. it's the same reason i alphabetize my bookshelf*: i like to keep my shit looking tidy. i'm a visual person. 's how i roll, yo.

and if you wanna whore yourself out to lj comms, hey, go nuts.

( yeah, all this twaddle about how boring this post is was a clever rouse to distract you from my plans to stage a coup d'etat, obviously )

and goddamn, do i need a new moodtheme/layout. right! gotta get around to that.

to make this post slightly less dull, i am going to gush a little bit about my obscene love of los campesinos! gareth, their lyricist, likes to write some pretty morbid songs, and he does so with unbridled glee. according to his myspace, his inspiration is moaning about girls and thinking about how eventually he will die. i prefer making girls moan and thinking about how eventually i will die (but generally not at the same time), but i am willing to put aside our differences and hear this dude out. did i mention his band is awesome? i think i am reasonably fond of them.



you guys, this song kills me. ah. man. i think i sort of fell in love with the character it's about, which is odd, because i don't think i was supposed to. mmmph. i'm tired. and i want romance is boring to be released nao pls.

*"bookshelf" is a very loose term. as of december '09, my bookshelf's been stacked to burst, and the path to my bed from my door has shrunk to a pitifully narrow one. but but but. my book piles are alphabetized, okay. shush. i do not have ocd tendencies.

this article is ridiculously awesome. i love kurt scwitters. and now you can too! huzzah for infectious awesome.

I KNOW this is pretty obnoxious on account of how I just posted about two seconds ago. But. Vonnegut was such a fantastic human being whose words needs to be shared at every available interstice, I swear. Here's the full quote, because I am evidently in a sort of typing-up-other-people's-words mood tonight:

No matter how corrupt, greedy, and heartless our government, our corporations, our media, and our religious and charitable institutions may become, the music will still be wonderful.

If I should ever die, God forbid, let this be my epitaph:

THE ONLY PROOF HE NEEDED
FOR THE EXISTENCE OF GOD
WAS MUSIC

Now, during our catastrophically idiotic war in Vietnam, the music kept getting better and better and better. We lost that war, by the way. Order couldn't be restored in Indochina until the people kicked us out.

That war only made billionaires out of millionaires. Today's war is making trillionaires out of billionaires. Now I call that progress.

And how come the people in countries we invade can't fight like ladies and gentlemen, in uniform and with tanks and helicopter gunships?

Back to music. It makes practically everybody fonder of life than he or she would be without it. Even military bands, although I am a pacifist, always cheer me up. And I really like Strauss and Mozart and all that, but the priceless gift that African Americans gave the whole world when they were still in slavery was a gift so great that it is now almost the only reason many foreigners still like us at least a little bit. That specific remedy for the worldwide epidemic of depression is a gift called the blues. All pop music today--jazz, swing, be-bop, Elvis Presley, the Beatles, the Stones, rock-and-roll, hip-hop, and on and on--is derived from the blues.

A gift to the world? One of the best rhythm-and-blues combos I ever heard was three guys and a girl from Finland playing in a club in Krakow, Poland.

The wonderful writer Albert Murray, who is a jazz historian and a friend of mine among other things, told me that during the era of slavery in this country--an atrocity from which we can never fully recover--the suicide rate per capita among slave owners was much higher than the suicide rate among slaves.

Murray says he thinks this was because slaves had a way of dealing with depression, which their white owners did not: They could shoo away Old Man Suicide by playing and singing the Blues. He says something else which also sounds right to me. He says the blues can't drive depression clear out of a house, but can drive it in the corners of any room where it's being played. So please remember that.

And--of course--here is "Blues from Down Here," and, as is my wont, ( lookee there are the lyrics: )

In my quiet moments, I totally think Vonnegut woulda been a TV on the Radio fangirl. He would've liked that they freely admit they have no idea what they're doing and that "A lot of bands have something to say...[they] have something to ask." That seemed like a pretty bitchin'-ly Vonnegutian sentiment to me anyway. Here, let me continue this post's theme, and leave you all with another profoundly inspiring quote from the mouth of Mr. David Andrew Sitek:

"Most of the music that I like was made on dope. There is no way I could play a song back to myself 3,000 times unless I was stoned. I don't ever want to repeat myself, so I try to be not too conscious of the process...Sitting in my underwear doing bong hits is how I get a mix to gel."

motherfucking \o/!

"Beneath My Hands"
by Leonard Cohen

Beneath my hands
your small breasts
are the upturned bellies
of breathing fallen sparrows.

Wherever you move
I hear the sounds of closing wings
of falling wings.

I am speechless
because you have fallen beside me
because your eyelashes
are the spines of tiny fragile animals.

I dread the time
when your mouth
begins to call me hunter.

When you call me close
to tell me
your body is not beautiful
I want to summon
the eyes and hidden mouths
of stone and light and water
to testify against you.

I want them
to surrender before you
the trembling rhyme of your face
from their deep caskets.

When you call me close
to tell me
your body is not beautiful
I want my body and my hands
to be pools
for your looking and laughing.

( additional rambling for those so inclined )

I'VE ALWAYS WANTED TO TELL YOU....

I figure being perpetually caught up on my flist + occasionally piping in with posts ruminating on Marc Chagall's contribution to the zombie apocalypse TOTALLY means it's time for the anon memes to start kicking around this journal. Trufax, I have been admiring them from afar all throughout my LJ furlough. I'm not so sure what exactly is the allure of eye-burning html marshaling in comments promising to tell me I've an alternate personality moonlighting as a furry, BUT I'M ROLLING WITH IT, MOTHERFUCKERS.

Other things I love: 1) Jeanette Winterson rendered sketchy by fangirling Alison Bechdel, 2) MY RIDICULOUS FUCKING HETEROSEXIST PURITANICAL ADJECTIVE-ABUSE-INDUCING FORMAL "SEX EDUCATION" FINALLY FUCKING ENDING THIS WEEK, 3) dancing around my living room to Los Campesinos! in very little clothing, and 3) LONG CAT IS LOOOOOOOONG. Oh my god the internet is eating my brain.

Hi, flist! How are you all?