Wednesday, July 23, 2008

"a pig, in a cage, on antibiotics"


A series of things happened. I watched a couple of movies that hit home. First it was "Fight Club". Although I'd seen it a few times, it really hit me how much of a corporate clone I have become. Then I saw "Into the Wild" and my world started to shift. The story of a young kid dying of starvation in the Alaska wilderness is tragic, but the movie also portrayed the incredible spirit that this young person had as well as the impact he had on other people. I know I'm forgetting other recent events, but just a few days ago, it happened again. I was listening to Radiohead's song "fitter happier" from OK Computer. The last words spoken by the automated voice are "a pig, in a cage, on antibiotics." That's how I feel. I've slowly traded peace of mind for security, creativity for monotony, bliss for drudgery. I work in a salt mine, a governmental placating machine. I was listening to KEXP a couple of hours ago and Joseph Arthur was being interviewed. He said "there is really plenty of time." What would a life like that feel like?

I'm not sure, but I have been thinking more and more about how I could spend more time being creative. I'm an artist. I need to feed my soul or I fear that I am going to lose my fucking mind. Where do I start? Save money. Contact people who will support me in my dream. Look for ways to bridge the gap, moving from the full-time grind to work you can do from a laptop, then integrate more music and other arts into your life until it feels like it is enough. Or work toward a place when I can jump off the tower completely. Hire a life coach? I don't know about paying someone a lot of money to tell me what I already know "he who is not busy being born is busy dying." Dylan wrote that. "Life is what happens while you're busy making other plans", John Lennon wrote that. "I want to peel off your chrome," Michael Clark wrote that. "I have absolutely everything, except a life." I wrote that.