We Need More Artists

It’s hard for me to write on the weekend. I have husband and son to occupy my time and keep me happy. It is easier to write when you’re frustrated with something or excited about something. Then it just comes out. Also there is no Facebook to piss me off while I’m taking a break from the 24 hours news cycle. Just watched some amazing hilarious cartoons. It’s the little things. Some people still make art, even in this world. 

I wish I could be funny about this shit. Sometimes I am. Most of the time it’s just so obvious how horrible things are and how little we can do. Except, we can enjoy things. Even when we aren’t making drastic changes, every moment we choose whether to be happy or calm. Active or not. Some activities are more valuable than others. But maybe time spent cuddling in front of television programs or movies wouldn’t be wasted if it was full of art instead of advertising dollars and objectification. 

I’m not against art, but all the good jobs that pay enough to afford shelter, bills, and food take our art and turn it into bureaucracy. The artists need to take back the culture. Every breakthrough in creative science requires artistry. We enjoy carefully crafted High Definition television and bright crisp advertisements. We have a need for input. For art which is language that communicates messages from other people that we will never fully understand. We will read what they say, and see what they draw, or film or sing, or engineer, and we still will never fully understand someone else’s life from their perspective. 

Computers and robots can take care of the monotony now. We need to learn how to use our cooperation and differences to make the most out of life for every man. We need to recycle and respect property and the metals and minerals we need to keep the cycle of life going. We need to respect how much energy we have tied up, how much water is in water bottles on shelves that should be in the cycle, how many gases and oils caught up in unnatural shapes. We will eventually have a finite number of resources on this planet; it is not the needs of the many keeping us slaves to consumption. 

The world has plenty for us. Especially with the more we learn. We have ways we could be maximizing life and science and learning the unimaginable to us now. Instead we are letting the extravagant needs of a few forces the rest of us to always struggle instead of contributing what we are worth. We never get to fully utilize our potential. These menial tasks take up most of our time. 

Why does anyone still have any paperwork? We should still write letters. They are tangible hand written art to someone. Calligraphy is to practice ancient hand-writings but some day our hand-writings will be ancient. What if someday you text it all? Children still do a ton of paperwork in school. Millions of massacred forests. Why not use hemp to make the paper and use APPs more often than dittos. 

Penmanship should be a skill and an art still learned, but much of what they do could just be done with one simple computer they all got on their first day of school. The forests we could save, consolidating all the paperwork. It has started but we need to accelerate the process. 

We can do so much better than a lot of the usual behaviors we are accustomed to. It’s time to forget the fucking box. Don’t step outside it. It doesn’t even exist. Throw away all the rules, except for, if it doesn’t feel good don’t do it. We need to avoid the adrenaline, or anxiety that we are all addicted to. 

What makes you feel good? What makes you relax? Looking at other people’s YouTube and cat meme art? Instantly connecting with friends because of social networking? Never truly feeling alone even when you really wish for it sometimes. 

There was a time when everyone was feeling alone and isolated. It has only started to change recently. This generation will be plugged in probably much sooner than any of us parents are going to like or are willing to admit. It takes over a little more of every generation. I had a LiveJournal before the word for it was even “to blog”. That shit wasn’t even a a noun or verb yet. I never said I had a blog, or I blogged, or I was a blogger. It wasn’t even a word yet in the average person’s vernacular. 

We were out there from the time we were teenagers. How will any millennial ever run for political office? We need a better measure of people than their hidden or fake persona. We need a new set of rules about what areas of people’s lives are off limits when it comes to what they are good at running or making decisions about, or performing. People's personal lives shouldn't be trash news fodder. We have real issues to address. 

Our social boundaries of judgment are out of whack. Photographers don’t want to invade people’s lives. The paparazzi shouldn't exist. There is enough to see that we are willing to share without anyone feeling violated. No one is perfect. We need people of merit to do the things they are best at. Figure out what you’re best at. And do it.We need more artists.

Change Needs A Voice

I am having an excellent life but I am not having great days. They drone on. I feel I have no purpose. Nothing helps the feeling of separateness. Would cleaning my house make me feel better? Wouldn’t it just be dirty again in a very short amount of time? Going to work for a paycheck doing whatever meaningless job the world thinks I am worth. Would that make me feel better? 

I don’t even know if what I technically feel could be called bad. I am hungry a lot. There isn’t ever an abundance of healthy food. Healthy food is expensive, it needs to be eaten right away and therefore bought frequently with trips to the market which takes a car and gas money I don't have. Maybe I should play music more often. There seems to be nothing to play. No vibrations coming forth from me. I don’t feel wrong but nothing really feels right. 

I can’t be happy by just ignoring the world and its suffering. How on earth can I fix it? I can’t fix it alone. Or perhaps the solution is not of this earth. It probably has a lot to do with unity. My crazy ideas about change and opposing the main stream media’s message make me a very unpopular person in my daily life. I have a small network of support. By no means a network the likes and size of what is needed for global change. 

Perhaps the network exists it is just being drowned out by other noise. That is the idea of the other noise, to make us feel we are all alone in our struggles. I realized today that I don't need to speak to everyone in the world. Due to the butterfly effect I only have to keep flapping my wings and the breeze will carry through all the people I love and effect things I can't even imagine in places I may never get to. 

Alone we are powerless, together we are the only thing that have ever swayed the world to greater ideas and lasting change. The hatred and frustration I find in even those who want change is disheartening. I find the hopeless optimism in the positive thinking movement lacks what we need. We cannot just be positive and expect the world to change. You cannot just pray or positive think the world to peace because change takes action. 

Change needs a voice. There is no power behind inaction and lack of standing up for ideals. So many people who feel they are truly doing the right thing don’t talk about it. Or they talk about it but ignore that there are solutions to the things that are so horrible they choose not to see them. You cannot blame racism on those who continue to bring up racism as a problem needing fixing. Worker’s rights and women’s rights will not change because you think you found enlightenment. 

Writing for me is like using a butterfly net to snatch floating ideas from the sky. Sometimes like dreaming while awake. Often while I wish I was sleeping along with the rest of the world. Instead I sit up at night like I am waiting. 

Waiting for what? Waiting for the answer. The answer to what? The answer to life the universe, and everything. Maybe just the answer to letting go of my own fears. I’m pretty sure there is more I could be doing to reach more people, I just don’t know what. I’m sitting on the runway waiting to take off and I suddenly realize I am not in an airplane.

The Seaside Park Fire

The boardwalk in Seaside Park burnt almost in its entirety today. What was left of the original boards after Hurricane Sandy. Maybe this is a sign of new beginnings. It makes me want to set the world on fire and watch all the past blow away like ashes while we rise up like a phoenix. 

If this was Captain Planet we’ve got Water, the flood, Earth, the earthquake, Fire, obviously, and Air, the hurricane covered. Now we just need Heart and we’ll be good to go. All that is left after all of the destruction is heart. No one was hurt which is really the most important thing. 

How can you quantify in words what it feels like to see your world, everything you once knew so well, burn? When I started a blog about politics and global news I never thought there would be so many local news events to center my writing around. This would probably seem a lot worse had the hurricane not reminded us that humans always rebuild, that’s what we do. Fantastical changes to the landscape and the souls of the people I know. 

Reality is more than my imagination can create. The events of our time often leave me wondering, is this real life? My dreams feel insane and dramatic but when I am awake is when the real drama transpires. I can always tell dreams for what they are. I am with the wrong beings, wearing the wrong clothes, in strange places I’ve never seen. 

It is always reality that takes what’s familiar and turns it upside down in ways unimaginable until they are reality. When days like today happen it is easy to remember tomorrow can be a better day. The sun will come out tomorrow. 

Critical ugly people become more obvious when tragedy strikes. Some may be speechless. Some may be hopelessly optimistic that we will recover. They are right, people always recover. Some people just can’t help themselves but to bring other people down. Those people aren’t worth having a place in your life until they learn otherwise. If they never learn otherwise they will always be the souls isolated and dragging the rest of humanity down. I am grateful to know so many beautiful beings that my life is always filled with possibilities even on the most seemingly awful horrid days. 

What Are You Afraid Of?

I feel I’ve hit a creative wall. I’m the man in the box. It is hard to always be opposition to the world as it is. I find very much wrong and very few ways to fix things. My anxiety is extremely high. I contemplated a professional but I don’t want to be told how to fix myself or what pills to take. I want to be told how to fix the world. I need mentors not doctors. 

Mentors are hard to find in this world. Especially with my specific ideas on what success is. I write my friends and loved ones. I’ve contemplated writing letters to successful people. How could they possibly have time to answer me when they are busy saving the world? You never know until you try I suppose. 

I am going to take a week off from input. Global input at least. No internet for me. I took a week off from reading once and it was glorious, to just live, to just be. I don’t want to do that though because I want to work on writing and I have a very important book from the library that I am trying to finish. Without time wasted reading the constant stream of the 24 hour news cycle I will have more time for my goals. 

Being here at home alone without internet becomes very isolating. It would be perfect if I lived far enough from other people for it to be quiet and peaceful. It is never quiet and never peaceful in this world. The world fills my head with realities when all I want is possibilities. 

I killed two pens today. I should probably use the AlphaSmart3000 instead but there is just nothing like the pen and paper thing for me. There’s something about telling a story to myself. I will probably just buy another pack of pens soon. I can only write in black pen, preferably of the same type, in case it runs out I switch to a new one without it looking like different writing. That’s why I hate blue pens. They are never quite the same color blue. Colored pens seem like they are for drawings or short spurts of art and not for writing endlessly. 

It seems I should read back the last 200 pages or so I am behind on rereading. I’m sure there are some blog ideas in there sprinkled about. Sometimes it feels weird posting things after the moment has passed. I am a new person from one moment to the next. I am tired of rigid people who never change. Life is a fluid motion. You have to learn from who you were and strive for what you want to become.

Sometimes I wonder if my life will ever truly be my own. We live in a world where other people’s desires or our responsibilities dictate all we do. What would true personal freedom be like? Happiness would consist of lots of notebooks and pens, a library, and somewhere to upload my thoughts so I am not entirely isolated from the world. If I stop paying attention to the world and it’s global happenings will I still have anything to write about? My days are all very similar, trapped in a cage of my own creation or it is the creation of someone else? 

I am incapable of performing my chosen profession or rather the profession that was chosen for me by convenience. I don’t want to waste energy and time on superficial solutions. I don’t want to smear chemicals all over people’s faces to make them appear some way they are not by nature. 

I’d love to someday be the one who writes the definitive history on what happened on 9/11. That will never happen. That isn’t the writing I like to do. I want to say what I feel. I want my artistry to be my primary source of being. I am not one for the world of peer reviewed science and people who can’t think outside the box. I don’t even believe the box exists. It is a hard place to be in this world. 

Isolated. 

If I wanted to join a bowling team I’d have support. If I wanted to pick a team in baseball or football I’d have support. Want true happiness and freedom for the globe, contemplate solutions to complex economic and social problems and friends are not as easy to find. I find most people think they are entirely right. I have come to realize everyone thinks what they know is right because they have only lived their life from one perspective, what else would they think? 

Self critical people are good but also very sad. Those who are hardest on themselves usually have the most valid things to contribute. Those who are confident that their view of the world is the correct view are usually wrong. 

I don’t know if I really want freedom from my depression. I don’t know if I would even know myself without it. I am an optimist who sees the world as a realist. I understand that the world isn’t how I would make it. I also understand I am not entirely powerless to change it. I am young. 

I am often overlooked because supposedly my life experiences are invalid because either I have not had enough of them for some people’s taste, or they didn’t include enough formal schooling. Except they did include formal schooling since I’ve studied enough to have a degree, I just often stop going to class once I think I’ve gotten everything I can out of it. I have also studied subjects in such a broad range of categories they don’t apply to a specific course of study to warrant a piece of confirmation paper. 

I rather like not having the piece of paper to warrant my respect. I should warrant respect just for being a human being. I don’t believe people incapable of receiving the magic University paper lack valuable ideas. You can be too programmed to know more. You can become too used to a certain way of thinking. When that happens there is no way to change your mind. I have concluded it is our minds that must change. 

I find people aren't truly content with the media or institutions of which they are so familiar. They are just used to them. Fear grips the hearts of every being on this earth. If we continue to live in fear of change, we will never see it. Change is frightening but fundamental to life. We are ever evolving. Let go of your fears and live the life you are truly meant to live. Be the being you feel deep inside yourself. What are you afraid of?

Today Is A Day For Peace

The global elite made a historic decision, officially announced by President Obama this evening. They have decided instead of bombing the oldest known center of human history on the planet, we will have our world leaders and United Nations that we created specifically for this purpose, examine their military complexes and factories and dismantle their chemical weapons. What if we had decided to negotiate in any of the instances of war up until now? What if we talked to world leaders and tried to reason with them instead of just bombing the shit out of them because they are bad people for killing people but we’re not. 

I’m really surprised more people don’t notice the significance of the United States choosing not to go to war this time. We haven’t chosen against military strikes and war in our entire history as a nation. This day will be legendary if this plan succeeds. Get ready for some false flag terrorist attacks. Deciding not to go to war on the night before the 12^th anniversary of September 11^th, 2001 says a lot about how far the American people and the world has come since then. The people united will never been defeated. 

A desperate civilian acting out of fear and bread in violence should be reasoned with and helped whether they are here or anywhere else in the world. When we are wronged with violence and we decide to continue that violence by retaliation, the culture of violence will never end. The cycle must be broken. Somewhere in the chain someone must decide to be hurt and not use that as an excuse to hurt others. Being that person feels impossible. When someone hurts me badly, in my life of privilege, usually with verbal or emotional abuse my first instinct is to retaliate and defend myself. I have learned I must control my own anger and stop hurting others if I am to be the change I want to see in the world. 

I felt that Obama saying “I want to bomb the shit out of anyone who uses chemical weapons on children, and if I could I would.” Was very honest. Many Americans will relate to that. I felt his admission that he prefers peaceful resolutions was also very honest. Some wonder how to completely conflicting statements can come from the same man and have them still be the truth. We are all conflicted. 

The decisions we make from day to day are never clear cut. Movies and media have lead us to believe the world is a certain way. There is a certain simplicity to the stories that are chosen and the characters portrayed by the big budget media. Real life is very complex. We must stand up for what is right without hurting others. We must be there for people while still allowing them to make their own mistakes. 

In my humble opinion talking is always better than violence. We don’t teach children in this world the value of understanding, compassion, and communication. We feel hurt so we feel mad. Instead we should that the other person didn’t mean to hurt us, they are just making poor decisions because of pain they are suffering in their life. 

The Assad regime chose to use violence against its own people because it does not know how to control them. In desperation any people become violent and rebellious towards authority. What use is authority and hierarchy when it is not based on merit but privilege? When you live in poverty and are constantly suffering lost loved ones and grief it is hard to reason with even the most rational of minds. The world is a very broken, hurting, and unequal place. 

We cannot get from bombs all the time and a history of war to a world of consideration and love over night. One small act at a time is how we get there. Choosing not to bomb soldiers who have families of their own and are only working for a paycheck, “doing their job” as we like to say, won’t solve this crisis of global fear and violence. 

I have the highest optimism that the dismantling of these dangerous chemical weapons and collaboration of world leaders who don’t entirely get along is one small step in the right direction. If Obama had chosen to bomb or use drone strikes again without approval we would be suffering. If another war was started by our Congress in our name we would be suffering. For today the world hasn’t started another war. For today that is enough.