Fall's Fortunate Foretelling

I sit here staring at a sun flower that grins a rich yellow from above my laptop screen, perched as it is in a narrow necked, fat bottomed bottle atop my desk. It's been a week or more since as kind a friend as I know in Boston bought it for a me still sick and behind and despairing. Its only curling a bit about the petals, but otherwise looking chipper and cheerful as any displaced plant ought in early October. And I admit, I find myself relating.

I would welcome a little escape, I admit. Just a little one. I read about these tear-drop trailers and thought of the desert in the Fall and longed to climb rocks, hike about, eat hearty, hot foods in the twilight. Just be present in the stuff of stuff. Be far from books and bars and burdens.

mewithoutYou has been helping me remember the meaning of the stuff of Stuff. Sleeping At Last too.

"a fumbling reply, an awkward rigid laugh
I'm carried helpless by my floating basket raft
your flavor in my mind swings back and forth between
sweeter than any wine and as bitter as mustard greens
light and dark as honeydew and pumpernickel bread
the trap I set for you seems to have caught my leg instead"

(Side note: my external hard drive with all my music: clicking. I think its gonna fail. Fuck.)

"We'll lift up the ground to see
The system of roots beneath.
Gears turn, endlessly,
To bring the world back to life
Like clockwork, when it dies.

The cadence of beating hearts,
The click of its moving parts
Grows louder and louder
From this restless earth...

Future gardens wait patiently below
somehow we smell them
blossom through the snow."

The nesting instinct is a fine thing and well enough. I don't think it a pure vanity to desire one's life is full of beauty, natural or creative. But its to be shared. This place would be a fine setting for a life-together-ed. Otherwise its all just a museum to lifeless artifice. Artifactualities.

Well, tomorrow is just the sort of day from which I need to retreat. Too full, too busy, too much. I'll face it all the better with a full night's sleep and further blogging serves that purpose not at all.

A little more Sleeping At Last before I'm sleeping, at last.

"We'll pray for heaven's floor to break
Pour the brightest white on blackest space
Come bleeding gloriously through
the clouds

and the blue

Forcing one place from two.
Killing formulaic views.

Only loves proves to be the Truth."

Nattering Nabom of Narcissism

First and foremost, you should know that for the whole month of June, the really awesome chicago-suburban band Sleeping At Last will be giving their album "Keep No Score" away for free on the interwebs. Here is the info from the studio-journal blog:
In celebration of our upcoming new album, we’re thrilled to announce that for the entire month of JUNE our previous album “Keep No Score” will be available as a FREE download!

Here’s how it works: Through a company called NoiseTrade we’ve set up a widget that allows you to choose between two ways to receive an immediate download of the album:

The first way is to enter your name, email address and zip code along with the emails of five of your friends. You can then immediately start downloading the album for FREE. You’re friends will receive just one email inviting them to sample the music and download it themselves. Neither you or your friends will receive any spam from NoiseTrade and only those that choose to sign up will receive any emails from us as well.

The second way is to pay any amount you wish, from $1 and up and start downloading.

Also, if you would like to help spread the word, the widget can be embedded anywhere that accepts html! So you can add it to your own facebook, myspace etc.. by click the “embed this widget” button or use the “twitter this” button.

Check it all out now, here: www.noisetrade.com/sleepingatlast

We’re really excited about all of this, thanks so much for reading! We’ll be updating you all soon on lots of exciting news about the upcoming New Album!

Love,
Dan & Ryan – Sleeping At Last

And, here's a clip of their string players recording from their studio journal, which you can follow HERE:


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Now, let’s interrupt the micro-fiction for a bit with some good ‘ole fashioned what’s-up-with-Jon bloggery, whadduya say?

I just spent two weeks in California, which is where I did the last couple entries here. Among other things, I went to Santa Cruz and hung out w/ my family, both biological and ecclesial at Missions Springs. I’ve been going on this all-church retreat every year since I was a kid and I try to make sure I get back in time to attend it after my spring semesters end. It was sunny and warm and delightful. I sat on the grass and read with my sister. And went and explored Santa Cruz with my sister and her BFF. And goofed off and rough housed with my sister. And got roped into running lights and sound for the worship services…with my sister.

Look, I’m gonna warn you right now, my sister is appearing prominently in this post. She’s totally awesome, so that shouldn’t be a problem. But if it is, you can suck it.

ANYWAYS, after we all got back, I went and saw Ben Folds play in Oakland. My mom loves herself some Ben, so she bought tickets for herself, one of her friends, my sister, me and JD, my BFF. We all went, the oldies sat in the balcony and the youths stood on the floor. We bathed in pot smoke and Folds’ awesomeness for a couple of hours. It was pretty damn cool. Plus, any time you hear a whole concert audience burst into three part harmony, you know its gonna be a good night.

Didn’t do much the rest of the week xcept hang w/ JD and read and drink coffee and shop and write for this blog. I read The Metaphysical Club by Louis Menand. If you like history, academics in general and/or America, go pick this book up. Excellent popular history of the influence of a handful of post-civil war new-england-style nerds on the 20th century. Friday night me and the sister drove to the Shoreline Amphitheater and saw the NIN/JA (Nine Inch Nails / Jane’s Addiction) Tour. We got there late cuz she had to work, but we saw all of NIN set. If you can catch them on this tour, get off your ass. Worth every penny. They are dialed in musically and their lighting design might be the best concert design of the decade. Just impeccable. Also, I argued with some fundamentalists who were picketing the concert, fueling further Christian-bashing amongst America’s youth. (My sister might still hate me for that.)

On Saturday, I went to a rawkin’ nineties-themed house party, where my sister rescued me from a it’s-3am-and-I’ve-lost-good-judgment make-out-session with the party-host’s ex GF by demanding we go home. I woke up the next morning and thanked her. After thanking her and sleeping through church, I played roller hockey w/ the guys, which was just fantastic and pain-inducing, and then church and a heffenade party at the same venue as the previous night, sans-almost-make-out girl. Then Monday night I got my owl finished and once its healed, I’ll post pictures. Some more JD/Sister/Coffee/Writing and one last jaunt to Santa Cruz, and then I hopped a plane back to Boston, where I promptly went to Common Ground for 80’s night.

So, anyways, I’m back on the East Coast and trying to get my summer legs about me. A brief run-down of what the heck that means? The briefest:

- Lattes and reading/writing at Café Fixe in Wash Sq.
- Hipster girls with bad attitudes, 2 at a time.
- 20 hours of soul sucking IT job a week
- Cooking/Baking/Crafting/Artsy-ing
- Lonergan/Blondel paper-proposal cluster-fuck

Keep On Doing What You're Doing.

I can, very often, conceive of how one would engage some task excellently. Unfortunately, the comprehensiveness of that conception is often enough to scare me off of actually pursuing it. Who has the time? Who has the patience? Who has the resources?

Conversely, and with likewise misfortune, a task which I have no earthly idea how to approach is rarely completed. Indeed, even begun!

And though I do spend a lot of time on facebook, I actually spend a remarkable amount of time...well, you know; doing things.

What sorts of things? I'm glad you asked.

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The Smart Set is the tentative name for the new music project I'm embarking on with my boy, Johnny B. We're aiming for a 5 song e.p. in the next few months. Songs that tell stories, basically. Attempts at humanizing our concepts through lyric and melody.

Our first task is to address commerce as a motivating principle of personal identity. Here goes...

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Accompanying the above is an attempt to work out a theoretical apparatus for how narrative is pragmatically more persuasive than "pure" argument in human life and especially human life together or what we vulgarly call "politics." I've hinted at it here before, but what is fundamentally necessary for action is faith. The mimetic (imitative, in a sense) nature of narration and the faith required to engage a narrative premise more closely access the sort of being that chooses its actions for reasons. The reasons are not always explicit and almost never simple or direct, but can be communicated in a holistic and felt way through the tactics of fictive persuasion, which are multiple and simultaneous.

In Milchian/Kierkegaardian terms, I'm going to work out the dialectical calculus as a means of releasing the movement of Spirit in my overly-reflective mind.

Hopefully that will help me write what God has for me to write.

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Lurking out there is a script I will finish before May. I will, I will, I will!

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Quasi-officially, I'm working on Blondel's thesis from 1893, Action, as well as Kant's Critique of Practical Reason and a whole host of hermeneutical approaches to theology with Fred Lawrence, a Lonerganian who teaches at BC. Also, reading through the Republic over a couple of weeks w/ friends to prep 2nd year-ers for Comps.

Gotta try to get some scholarships for next year as well. This place is wildly expensive.



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Other little projects?:
- start making my own fancy coffee at home
- get my apartment likewise fancy.
- finish off the last tid-bit of credit card debt.
- get another (big) tattoo
- don't fuck it up w/ a girl
- TBA

Godspeed, everybody.

Reality's Musicality

There are two stanzas in an obscure song by an obscure midwestern band that most intimately express the hurt and the hope of my heart. It almost always puts tears in my eyes.

Go check out www.myspace.com/sleepingatlast and listen to "Needle and Thread

The verse:

They say this place has changed
but strip away all of the technology
and you will see that we all are hunters
hunting for something that will make us OK...

And then:

"You were a million years of work"
said God and his angels with needle and thread.
They kissed your head and said
"You're a good kid and you make us proud,
so just give your best and the rest we'll come and we'll see you soon."

Feeling a tad overmatched tonight, but I'm looking forward to keeping a promise tomorrow.


Godspeed

Celebrity Levity

William H Macy plays the ukulele:


Lauren Graham, who is in fact the cutest cute to ever cute, sort of plays the piano:


And if you don't have She & Him's album yet, pick it up. You should all fall in love w/ Zoe Deschanel: