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Month: April 2022

Things That Scare Me

Things That Scare Me

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I was listening to Jonny Greenwood’s latest score and I am ashamed to admit that often times I am moved by the music, having never watched the film. I definitely intend to watch Spencer, but my opportunity to see it in theatres was lost amongst the shuffle of life. I’ll report back here once I do but until then this piece highlights something I want to call a beautiful dread. I lack the knowledge of musical theory to really describe it but there is the challenge and response at the beginning, followed by an unceasingly ascending fugue that is anchored by some devastatingly minor chords. He is channeling J.S. Bach at his most contrapuntal here, which in the film is no doubt a reference to the baroque excess of the royal lineage, but for the person sitting here listening to it without knowledge of its origins it fills me with a promise of greatness and an anxiety of failure. The fugue is especially suited for this because it’s layering of melodic lines represents the many pressures, demands, and thoughts circling through my head at these times of fear. Yet undeniably, on the whole, it’s a beautiful, fragile piece and although there is an undercurrent of anguish it strives upward and onward like many dancers who do not notice they are inching towards a great precipice as they are too preoccupied with their partners.

But the song alone is not responsible for my current malaise. This Sunday I’m doing a brevet, a 200km bicycle ride, I’m afraid of: 124 miles and 6000 feet of elevation which for me is no walk in the park. If it goes well it will be both the highest elevation and the furthest distance I have ever covered in a single ride. I have 13 hours on this earth to finish, which may very well be a lot until you realize I practice the way of the tortoise when it comes to these large efforts. Yet why am I afraid? Not finishing a bicycle ride will hardly be the worst thing to ever happen to me. It is my soul that would suffer, the bitter defeat of not achieving my goal, however small, is a blow to my ego and confidence. I have employed every trick in the book to rationalize away this fear:

“I’ve done 100 miles what’s 24 more?”

“I’ve done 5400 feet of climbing in 70 miles, 6000 spread out over 124 miles that’s easy.”

“My friend Daniel is doing 370 miles that day, he is surely better than me but even I can keep up on his last 124 miles can’t I?”

“Worse comes to worse I can just stop and quit, it’s my choice. I can get picked up.”

“If I feel like I wont finish I can cut the route short, I am the master of my own destiny after all.”

“Even if I don’t finish maybe I will still have gone further than ever before.”

This is my personal fugue, playing endlessly in my head leading up to the ride this Sunday. There is the anticipation of pain, but also the sweet dreams of victory. Will I come back here next week hence and regale you with the tale of my adventure, mission accomplished? Or will I publish a post about Icarus and how he journeyed too close to the sun? This is what Kierkegaard refers to as Anxiety, the dizziness of freedom, for after all as much as I like to hand off the responsibility of being on this ride (“I paid $20, I have to do it now”) it is my choice alone to put myself through this gauntlet, a test of my mental and physical fortitude. Taking that responsibility is unmasking my true being and rejecting the many excuses and opportunities to exit it that my inauthentic self whispers to me is part of the challenge. So there we have it: challenge, response, and now the perpetual silent second before the journey.

Roles And Bad Faith

Roles And Bad Faith

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I watched Michael Mann’s Thief yesterday about, you guessed it, a thief. He’s the best thief, but he’s trying to get out of the business. You see this archetypal film a lot, “The best at x because it’s all they’ve ever known, but the consequences are catching up”. Compare this to another archetypal plot: “They’re the best at x but no one will give them a chance to prove themselves”. Of course there is the Hong Kong Kung Fu twist on this: “They have the potential to be the best at x but they need a master to help them achieve it”. It’s all influenced by the other now but this was a highlight between traditional Western and Eastern thought. Look at the cowboy films from the 60s, these badass men just drifted in from who knows where and they were masters of their art, fully formed from the womb no doubt. In the West we want to believe we can become masters using only extreme American gumption, and the tools at our disposal. In the East one can only achieve their true potential by acknowledging and listening to the wisdom of their elders. Like I mentioned though the two schools have mixed, at least in film (Think Kill Bill). James Caan’s thief did have a master in the form of a character played by Willie Nelson.

So what is it about these people that are the best at what they do that makes for a fascinating watch? All of our human existence is a struggle to learn and I think sometimes we want to fantasize about what happens when we get to the end. To use a concrete example, I’ve been cycling two years now and yeah I’d want to watch a film about the best cyclist (sit down Lance Fakestrong), what does that look like? What kind of super human feats could they accomplish? I know that objectively there is an actual best cyclist out there in the world since that’s how sports are structured, but give me a mythical, fictionalized one that I can aspire to, that will never break, disappoint or otherwise let me down. I think we all inhabit various roles every day of our lives, and there is satisfaction that comes from the being the best at it. Yet none of these roles are truly us.

To use an example from Jean-Paul Sartre that I just read about, say I am a waiter and I’m the best waiter gliding around a restaurant, taking orders, never forgetting a single item, never dropping a plate or delivering food late and charming all the patrons meanwhile. The totality of my being and energy in this moment is devoted to being an absolute badass waiter. Sartre describes this as living in bad faith with yourself because by inhabiting a role so perfectly you are undoubtedly pushing down the part of your consciousness that makes you a real person. So why do we do it? It feels good to perform. If we imagine an action as a series of miniature goals and targets then in a way every person on earth is an athlete and their sport is living. For example, as a waiter I know I have to take the orders of customers in the order that they arrived: that’s goal #1. I need to jot down or memorize the order correctly including customizations: goal #2. I need to deliver these orders to the kitchen on time: goal #3. These micro goals go on and on and achieving each one will produce some measure of satisfaction.

Another reason why we like to exist in bad faith is because it can be a form of meditation where we stop thinking of the pressures and anxieties that are outside of our control. It’s essentially a relief to inhabit some perfect (or perfect adjacent) version of ourselves that does not have to deal with pressures of true existence if even for a short while. It’s not a cure for our existentialist ailment of course, as our true authentic selves need to reassert eventually. Existing in a role for too long provides diminishing returns and if we lose sight of the compass that is our real being then we grow stale in the roles we have chosen for ourselves. This is the great wheel of life that capitalism (for one) has sunk its teeth into. Our jobs are defined by roles, and we are provided targets and goals for these roles. Corporations know that positive feedback titillates us, and providing a great amount of work for us to accomplish will keep us working by sheer force of existential dread. Yet even if we like our jobs, we are existing in bad faith because we ignore the multi-facetedness of our life. What’s more, existing in a role takes away our ability to choose, technically we are “deciding” to go to work every day, but ask yourself if you really are or if you feel forced to via the pressures surrounding you and then you’ll know that you’re living in bad faith. “But that’s what the weekend is for” I hear you corporate shills saying. Our lives should be lived in accomplishments, feats, decisions, and changes not in two days out of the week.

Everything Is Jazz

Everything Is Jazz

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Yesterday I rode 100 miles on my bicycle, a concept that is still kind of mind blowing to me as even the thought of driving 100 miles fills me with exhaustion. From my Palm Springs Century post it’s clear though that 100 miles isn’t some monolithic suffer fest like you would imagine cycling 100 miles at a gym is. It really becomes a series of adventures, compromises, and improvisations. I think it’s that excitement that keeps the ride feeling fresh and vital the whole way through. This time I wont exhaustively cover the music through the ride because even though I was listening to some, since I was cycling through Los Angeles my mind was distracted by the sights of the city, and by trying to stay alive despite some drivers’ insistence otherwise.

Churro maple glaze

The century ride started as a great romp up the all the strand beaches and since I was riding mostly solo I could stop and take in views but more importantly stop for donuts. I had a deadline of 11 am to get to the arts district so I cut across Santa Monica, down the exposition bike path which runs parallel to the expo line, and finally down Venice boulevard straight into downtown. Just barely made it on time since I can’t play fast and loose with the traffic lights while riding alone, the ones in downtown especially took foooorever. Made it to Detroit Vesey’s (an awesome new cycling cafe at the arts district) just barely in time for the Heavy Pedal group ride that was rolling out.

They had posted the route in the weeks previous and it was going to be a ride up Elysian Park as an appetizer climb before hitting Griffith Park and climbing up to the observatory and back to the cafe for a raffle. What I didn’t know was that they had made the decision to do the route in reverse and hit Griffith first and I didn’t realize it until about 20 minutes in. Thankfully I made the start of the ride or I would have been severely lost, but Daniel was trying to catch up with us and I voice texted him the change in route lest he be lost forever too. He eventually caught with us up the climb to Griffith which I was impressed by because I would have given up and gone back. The group ride wasn’t slow either, I was struggling to keep up on the flats and once we hit the observatory climb I abandoned all hope of staying with the group. I went at a snail’s pace, I think the previous 60 miles, the heat, and the extra effort I had just made brought my energy levels way down.

Eventually Daniel who had long since caught and passed me told me that the group was waiting, and I did put in some extra effort because I didn’t want to be THAT guy who held everyone up even though I totally did anyways. I was the last person to get to the top and the group rolled out to take a photo in front of the Hollywood sign. Since it was hot and the group (me) was lagging it they decided to just ride straight back to the cafe which was a blessing since I wasn’t looking forward to the second climb.

Back at the restaurant we hade some delicious latkes, coffees, cookies, and I even had a mocktail that scratched that itch for a refreshing mid-ride drink. I ended up winning two prize bags in the raffle easily worth over $150 and I only bought $40 worth of tickets so it was money well spent. Finally it was time to head home for the last 24 miles of my century.

I took it real easy on the LA river path going back to Long Beach since the pains of a century had begun to set in: saddle soreness, back pain, toe pain (this one is the bottleneck for me right now, can get painful enough that I have to stop and take off the shoes for a bit sometimes). I realized as I got closer to home that I was going to fall 2 miles short of 100 since I didn’t do the climb up Elysian. Part of me didn’t care and wanted it to be over, the other part of me wanted to finish what I fucking started. The latter me won and I flew past the exit to my home and down to the beach path for some bonus miles. What I totally forgot was that the shoreline area had been inundated by tourists going to the Grand Prix, and an entire swath of the path was closed to foot and bicycle traffic. I got to a chain link fence and was told I needed to go back the way I came. Instead of going all the way back up to river path to the previous exit I rode up the wrong way on the Queens Way Bridge then flipped a U turn back into downtown and finally, mercifully back home.

I had a tight timeline since I was trying to make a concert at 7pm. Except as I found out when I got there the concert was actually at 8 pm. So I went to get a coffee and wait. I was watching Big Band of Brothers, a big band tribute to the Allman Brothers Band which sounds crazy but inevitably makes perfect sense. I sat in the theatre and watched this 13 piece band rip through some ABB classics with saxophone, trumpet, and trombone solos standing in for Dickey Betts and Duane Allman. The 100 miles still felt fresh and my legs were feeling a dull throbbing pain, I should have been home resting, but I absolutely wanted to see this band. This milieu I was in had me reflecting on the nature of Jazz. I was an Allman Brothers fan long before I was a jazz fan but now it seems inevitable that I would come around to it. The Allman Brothers band live was an amazing experience, the songs are never played the same way. You have all these musicians on stage who play off each other, off the energy in the room that night, or just trying something new that day. This southern classic rock jam band is really just a jazz band. I read a description of a 30 minute version of Whipping Post once where the band had shifted past the first couple verse and choruses and into a primordial ooze of instrumentation, a space where the band was still playing but where direction the song could go in was infinite, it was the nameless miasma before the universe is created. Then suddenly there’s a big bang and the song takes real shape again with every musician suddenly knowing exactly what their role in this new world is. That’s fucking jazz! So it’s inevitable that I would one day grow to love it, and also inevitable the Allman Brothers would be transcribed so well into it.

This form of improvisation is what sets this genre apart from every other music on the planet, what’s more it’s uniquely American. To me jazz shows are electric, energetic, and always unique. Something which unfortunately is not true for all the concerts I go to, thinking of Slayer and Megadeth who play through their songs with precision and clockwork just as they are on the albums, but it’s okay I love them for other reasons I’m sure I’ll get to on here some day.

This interplay between conflict, resolution, solos, improvisation, payoff: it was just like my ride that day. This dance between obstacles, setbacks, shortcuts, serendipitous rewards: that’s fucking Jazz! It’s alive and ever changing, exciting and new every time, no matter how many miles I ride.

Fleeting

Fleeting

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I feel like it was five weeks ago that I was graduating college, elated, thinking I had my whole life ahead of me to make my mark upon it. It’s been almost 10 years since that and life continues to evaporate on sight. Where does it all go? Is it pooled up somewhere beneath the floorboards of my home waiting to be discovered? It’s 80% air and 20% chips. The more life I try to have, the faster it goes. Time dilation is a hell of a drug. Yet my purse holds but a meager three decades of life whereas others have lost more than that on a bet.

At a child’s birthday party last weekend I was acutely aware of the whole spectrum of current human existence. I’ll chalk it up to the first big event of the kind that I’ve been to since the great stop-gap of covid 19 but I could see the generational lines in the sand. The baby boomers were sitting, observing, and vibing with the kids, generation x was taking a chill pill and laying back as their children took on the duties of the party, the millennials were hurriedly looking after their kids and frantically making sure the festivities took place as planned, generation z was talking about the latest music and sitting in a corner laughing at tik toks, and the children…running around with boundless energy, ready to replace all of us.

I was there with my baby brothers who my father decided to have later in life. So I got a taste of what some of my friends are going through right now having to manage two walking, talkings ids. There was an octogenarian acquaintance of mine who I touched base with briefly since we hadn’t spoken in a long time and as we watched my little brothers marvel at the animals in the petting zoo he wasted no time delivering straight cold hard truths to me in only the way a man whose shed all pretense can. He told me how all the friends he went to high school with were dying, “that’s just the age I’m at.” I thought how crazy and distant that sounds, all my high school friends are buying homes, getting married and having kids. Yet I remember how quickly the last 10 years have flown by. When I was 15 I thought living on my own seemed almost impossible and here I am in the third decade of life in the blink of an eye spinning the plates of self-sustenance. All of a sudden it seems like getting to 80 and watching the world crumble around me doesn’t seem so far away. What’s the lesson here? Be present, self-reflect as much as you can, the saying goes that you don’t know you’re living in the good times until they are over but that sounds to me like that person never stopped for a beat to evaluate their happiness. Better yet, assume it’s always the good times and don’t ever stop making them so.

Benedictus

Benedictus

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At a bar last night some poor woman had the misfortune of asking me what I was currently reading and I proceeded to vomit half-formed ideas on existentialism, freedom, authenticity, and self-discovery at her. Today I realized I desperately needed an outlet lest the flood gates be open upon more unsuspecting bar patrons. Sometimes I loathe the question “what is it about”. Can you truly summarize such a dense work of prose in a sentence or two? (Spielberg would say yes) Yet as humans we are constantly compacting, contextualizing, and abstracting vast amounts of information. Not only that but it is the foundation of the creative process to absorb and produce. So, as my platform, this blog shall serve as the repository for all further fruits of my creative digestive track.

I have about two dozen half written drafts of posts I was inspired to write but subsequently got cold on. In fact I have about a dozen of them that have the preceding sentence written into them, as if such a sentiment holds the key to actually, finally publishing one of these damned things. But so help me God this is the one that will make it through because I’m deciding to keep these short and sweet. My problem previously has been to try and write thematically cohesive, well thought out essays (or stories) but really my mind has never worked that way. So today I am presenting my thoughts just as I currently have had them today.

I mention God because he is on my mind. And I mention he because he is the patriarch of the church as was made clear by the Great Mass I witnessed today. Mozart’s other great unfinished work was performed handsomely by the LA Philharmonic at the illustrious Walt Disney Concert Hall. As usual I was the only one there wearing a Sleep hoodie and a t-shirt and below the median age of 50. I’m trying to make classical concerts metal again but I’m fighting a losing battle I fear. The LA Phil was kind enough to display lyrics of the translated Latin up on the wooden beams behind the orchestra. For something that sounds so divine the lyrics are so boring. Oscillating between “we worship you great father” and “we thank you for your glory”. That’s not to say the music was boring though, quite the opposite, it feels rapturous to sit in that theatre and listen to the rich sound of the orchestra delivering some of Mozart’s most inspired writing. I could not help but wonder how he wrote something that could make me feel as if I believed in a divine being without actually doing so. To me, belief in God was never even a consideration so although I grew up Catholic, I wouldn’t call myself a lapsed catholic, I simply never was one. Which brings me to my other rumination of the day, that I am nothing.

The concept of nothingness as it relates to existentialism is a void to which all meaning can be ascribed to. Simply put (from a simple understanding I’ll admit) it means absolute freedom, infinite possibility because nothing has no attachments, duties, wants or needs. We are born nothing and we die nothing. Which sounds nihilistic but in fact is rife with excitement and opportunity…and anxiety. I sat at a coffee shop today to try and parse through this concept and after the last bit of caffeine ran its course I decided a bar was more suitable for the punk rock philosophers of the 1900s. A single beer can go a long way towards helping you understand the concepts of Being and Not-Being, nothingness, and time. So I was swimming in this philosophical milieu as I watched, experienced, the LA Phil play Mozart’s exaltation towards his heavenly father. If we are nothing, walking voids then naturally we try to fill that by collecting identities, roles, occupations, ideas. It would appear to me that God, the church, and any religion is the ultimate answer to that void, certainly the easiest to adopt since the processes and mechanisms have all been laid out for you by generations preceding. I can’t help but admire the creative work of geniuses that are moved by a singular focus and devotion to religion. Having that clear of a purpose is work in and of itself, but it’s not for me.

Imagine Mozart in 1782 composing a tribute to God, hoping his audience would worship in unison with his music reaching a height that neither would on their own. Enter me in 2022 using the performance as a springboard to ponder the absence of God and my ability to free myself from religious attachments whilst experiencing second hand spirituality. I’ll admit that this sort of intellectual hijacking is always a delicious treat when I am present of mind to notice it.