I was leafing through my sketchbook that i’ve had for the past few years and came across an entry from fall of 2001. It’s a dialogue with my inner fears, insecurities and proverbial demons. I was in a sculpture class, and at the time was really struggling with a low in my depression. The end result of this period/passage was a 5 1/2 foot-tall, 750+lb. pawn (chess piece) made out of baltic birch plywood. I think you can figure out what it symbolizes.

It’s scary how far I’ve come. And I thank God that I’m no longer in that place, mentally.

—-

They sit, perched on the precipice of my sanity. Smoking Marlboro cigarettes, clouding my thoughts, puff by puff.

“Erect a golden calf of loathing and resentment and we will leave.”

Leave? They never leave. They sit on tattered red bar stools sipping stale, cold coffee, drowning my soul gulp by gulp.

“So what is our next present, pet?” “Make us a pretty present, pet.”

I will if you would just stop tugging at my sanity.

“Speak of sanity? Why so much? You have enough. You will feed us. We will suckle at the bosom of your sanity until you are barren. Pin us down, put us on paper. Nothing makes us happier than being immortalized in your dream book. Build the Trojan Horse of Norwood so that we may storm the gates of your own confidence…surely to be forgotten in all annals of history.”

—-
…and I did. Now it sits someplace far, far away from me. I never want to see that thing again. I never want to feel that again.

I was in San Francisco for a week. Sorry for the lack of postings. But frankly, I’m not sure why I’m apologizing to myself. Perhaps guilt is blind to reason.

Although I usually find myself starting off posts with a rhetorical question, why not give it yet another go: Have you ever found yourself so genuinely amused by something, that even your own earnest chuckle is embarassing?

As I settled down for dinner last night, eager to relax after a week out west, I popped in a DVD that I just bought. Thanks to the kind funding of a friend, I was able to buy the documentary on They Might Be Giants, chronicaling their lives in the music industry. Little did I know that I would be instantly transported back to my own childhood, instantly recalling all the lyrics to the 7 or 8 albums that I owned as a teenager. What a feeling.

I’m not sure how aquainted anyone else is with TMBG, but for me they were the building block of my current musical tastes and even understanding of pop composition. I stole my sister’s copy of Flood right before a road trip to Michigan. Hunkered down on the back floor of the parent’s conversion van, I watched the greenery whiz by as my ears were filled with some of the most peculiar and entertaining music I had ever heard. By the age of 8, I was already a music junky, but more versed in the likes of Michael Jackson, Genesis, The Doors, Depeche Mode and Erasure (and the Top Gun soundtrack, seeing as my dad was obsessed and he controlled the ever-important car stereo on trips). TMBG created these intimately personal, desolate yet still happy-as-hell songs that were cleverly wordy and humorous. Part of me was embarrassed to be listening to them, for it was like listening to a reel of commercial jingles they were so poppy. But I was drawn to the wordplay. They used words and metaphors in their lyrics like no other artist I had ever met. They were expressing themselves, but in the most intelligent and perhaps cryptic way that my naive ears had ever heard.

Needless to say, I became hooked. I eventually went on to buy 7 or 8 of their albums, loving every one of them. They were the soundtrack to my late childhood. I cut the grass every week to them. I sat in my room drawing to them. And unlike the slick, glossy words of Phil Collins or MC Hammer at the time, John and John felt like family…tangible and real, not in a far-off distant land of recording studios. I loved this intimacy.

As time moved on, and high school rolled around, my musical tastes exploded even more. I graduated from cassettes to cds, and thus my TMBG collection sat useless and dusty in the corner of my room. Sure, I listend to Flood a few times in high school (friend’s cds) but I left behind the comfortable ditty’s of youth for “cooler” and just plain different music. It was time.

But sitting on my couch in the end of February, 13 years after I first was introduced to them, my childhood came rushing back to me: The smell of freshly cut grass, the warm, secretive feeling of being back in the van, the inner smile after hearing genuis lyrics set to beautifully crafted pop songs. I forgot how much TMBG played a role in developing my love of music. I guess they were the proverbial uncle that I never really had that inspired me during my childhood. And since then, I’d forgotten all about them.

As I turned the DVD player off for the evening, I couldn’t help but chuckle. Not intentional, not even provoked, it was a chuckle that one gets when realizing their own stupidity after all these years. It was the chuckle of finding out that someone you left behind was right all along: that you’d grow too cool for them for awhile, but come back eventually, just to love them even more.

And I have.

[new pics are up on the right from SF]

Have you ever known someone that you could consider a neverlearned? Ok. Strange word that I made up and use for my own devices. Two seconds of explaination needed:

Neverlearned, noun, A person who despite being in full ability to deduce or conclude from a given set of facts, still fail to learn the lesson.

Now, bear in mind that I don’t mean this in the kind of way that a child learns stimulus/response or cause/effect relationships with, say, physical pain. Nay, a neverlearned is much older and who’s “neverlearned status” comes not from repeatedly burning themselves on the hot stove. Neverlearneds are typically late-adolescent (showing signs of such) to adult (full-fledged). Elderly people do not count. They get AARP and Golden Buckeye discount cards instead, so leave them out of this one.

So with this in mind, have you ever come across a neverlearned? I certainly have, and I in fact fear that these people are multiplying, filling the nooks and crannies of this once sensible, logic-deducing country.

My neverlearned never seems to get it. Now they’re not dumb by any stretch of the imagination. In fact, by all standardized test scores and diplomas, they’re very intelligent. But for some reason, they are unable to take a set of facts presented to them, and deduce the result or outcome based on that problem set. I fear that Neverlearned’s main downfall on the SAT was the reading comprehension section that relies soley on your ability to read between the proverbial lines and answer the literary equation to the right of the equals sign.

All humor aside (just for a moment, perhaps), the phenomenon of the neverlearned is quite serious. These individuals do not take guidance well. Because they’re naturally intelligent, they feel as if they do not need to be “shown” anything. But yet if you say, “ok then what’s most likely going to happen if we continue to do this…?” Neverlearned can’t say. They’re unable to add up the gravity and consequences of a series of factors, weigh them internally and produce a verdict or even mild conjecture. Neverlearned just never learned how to process information.

It saddens me. More and more people seem to be like this. We as a society (BEWARE of sweeping generalizations ahead) are wonderfully adept at taking in information, from our cell phones, from Dan Rather, from Bob and Tom, from CNN.com. We take in a truly incredible amount of information. But can we say that much is done with that? For most, I don’t see the information processed, the numbers crunched or data compiled to produce anything. It’s like buying an ass-load of art supplies and locking them in a warehouse, somehow magically thinking that this series of actions will produce art someday with no exterted intervention. How is it that we’re losing the ability to reason and rationalize?

I’ve often wondered if modern judiciary practices have led us astray, at least in part. We let judges and juries decide if someone’s entitled to $780,000 in damages for tripping over their own child in a furniture store. We let Big Brother and the Tribe decide who’s worthy of staying on the ever-important island. We let Siskle/Ebert (i apologize for i forget which one passed on) tell us which movies to see and Glamour magazine which sex positions to try. We’re quickly handing over our right and natural-given abilty to chose. We let the ever-looming presence of the outside world, filled with its overabundance of information, dictate to us what we should or should not choose.

But what’s the connection between the neverlearneds and choice, you might ask (besides making a swell title for a kid’s book: “The Neverlearneds and the Great Choice Connection.”)? Well, i’ll tell you so long as you’re still reading this jibberish. Neverlearneds don’t choose anything, or at least anything major. Sure they choose to get up in the morning, put pants on and go to work. Don’t get me wrong, that’s a big and important choice to make. But when it comes to politics, religion, interpersonal relationships or even on the broad topic of “life,” neverlearneds can’t make a choice. They can acknowledge the deficit. They can affirm that they’re upset with their partner. They can say that they don’t believe in hell. But it’s all facts. They can’t tell you why any of the preceeding statements are true of false, because they “just are.” No supporting facts can be given and no reason is able to be explained for any such proclaimed statements. They just “are.”

Living a life of active choice (to me, the highest achievement) means to affirm or deny everything. To look at all data about your job, your religious convictions, your decision to have one more scotch than you should have, EVERYTHING…look at everything as having possible positive and negative consequences and weigh each decision in life based on that. Living a life of active choice does not mean just saying “I’m a Christian” or “I like Neil Diamond.” There are reasons behind every choice, and you have to know *why* you do/do not choose something to be in your life. Neverlearneds can’t weigh situations because they can’t process information well. Neverlearnds don’t make choices, they just do something without knowing why.

Well starting now, I resolve to fight. No, not to abondon, mock or haze the neverlearneds that I know. Instead, I want to teach them how to choose again, to reclaim their given right of choice. Because in all seriousness, without our right to choose or affirm, we become the many mindless drones in the Cult of the Neverlearned that houses information but never uses it. And damnit if I’m going to watch you buy a Clay Aiken cd at full price, you sure as hell better have a whole list of reasons behind that decision. Don’t think I won’t ask you what they are, either.

Wow. I never thought about it that way. Who would have thunk it?

So I was reading an article (no link, forget where) that although poorly written brought up an interesting point: with the advent of HDTV broadcasting and the resulting clarity of almost every pixel, the beautiful stars of Hollywood suddenly look less beautiful. So for now at least, the curtain is pulled back and we see Star City for what it is: a bunch of expert makeup artists and crafty lighting techniques.

Now, I’m not saying that people in Hollywood are not beautiful in real life (read: HDTV), but perhaps now they’ll be less “out of this world” beautiful as we have been led to think all along. Think about it. Most of us have this unrealistic picture of Jennifer Aniston and her skin tone or Cameron Diaz’s perfect body. But everything really does look better obscured just a tad. Try taking a digital photo and softening/blurring it just a tad. The softness blends away tiny imperfections (heck I do daily in my job, touching up people’s faces through a variety of techniques) that normally would appear on regular film.

This is great.

Not that I have it out for Hollywood, but I do confess that I have a rather active dispassion for the star worship that goes on, and I cannot even escape the unrealistic images in my head of most stars and how perfect they are. How can we blame ourselves. Not many of us have actually met stars in person, to see their pores and follicles up close. We rely on TV transmissions and film reproductions that although we know consist of makeup and lighting, I’m not sure we take into account film or TV quality. At least I never thought of this before now.

So until makeup artists and lighting technicians relearn their trades to continue the lie (apparently Friends set designers painted its primary set in light purple because the resulting aura supposedly gives the cast a healthy glow even in HDTV), perhaps we’ll learn to worship stars for their perfection because they will fall to earth before us. Not that I’m wishing anything on them. In fact, maybe it’ll be a good thing for them as well. Maybe they’ll get stalked less. Or at the very least those damned makeup commercials will result in a few less exclamations of, “seriously, who has skin like that?” from my living room. Bring on the HDTV.

(also interesting to note: apparently Cameron Diaz’s longtime battle with acne is not-so-covered up when viewing in HDTV.)

It’s amazing how we develop fears. If there was one cosmic secret to which i was privy, I would wish it to be that of knowing where phobias originate in the psyche.

By no means am I anything close to a “well read” individual on this topic, but of mild notable exception is the fact that I have indeed read some Freud and countless other philosophers/psychologists (not trying to lump those two professions together, i’m just partial to slashes). But nothing seems to qualify for me the true origination of a fear in a person’s mind. Perhaps I’ll spend the rest of my life pouring through books to find the one professional that can at least pin it down most articulately in the English language (or translations to such).

For me, the biggest fear is being misunderstood or misrepresented. I suppose that this is a watered down position on the perversion of truth. But whatever it is in fact, I’m deathly afraid of such occurrences. Perhaps i’m being too inarticulate here.

For one, I hate stereotypes. I’ve always thrived off of the counter-stereotype (ie - preppy+skater fashion, rebellious look+conservative ideology). It amuses me to no end, plus it’s my subtle f’you to the lazy global masses that refuse to see brethren as individuals as opposed to lumping them together to more easily understand them. So because of this dislike of typecasting, I’m dreadfully afraid of being pigeonholed as something I’m not. I’m afraid that the truth of who I am will somehow be misrepresented and misunderstood. This is my fear on a mild, inconsequential level.

Let’s take it up a notch. I quiver in fear (and partially swell with anger) when something that I’ve said is taken out of context. Perhaps it is because I consciously work at picking my words carefully and being lucid (although I regret not being consistently successful) that I go crazy when someone repeatedly takes things the wrong way. This to me is a bit more serious of a fear.

Skipping up many levels, the ultimate fear of mine is being blamed for something that I haven’t done. No, not in some childlike, “got unfairly blamed for breaking your mother’s good serving dish” kind of way; but rather in a way that involves your whole identity or being…with consequences that carry gravity such as keeping a job, or having a spouse leave you or being arrested. Being accused of cheating on a spouse (when you’ve worked so hard at being a good husband), being profiled as having committed a crime or having falsified reports about work performance are truly disheartening thoughts to me. And I suppose that the real anger/frustration/fear (see, slashes again) comes when *everyone else believes the liars.* That’s my fear… that I’ll be speaking the truth and no one will listen. That I’ll be pouring out my heart and being for a cause, to represent the truth and the majority will vehemently follow the Lie. From where did this fear come?

I’m not sure…but the effects of this anxiety are widely applied to my life; from my religious convictions to my art to my being in general. I’m deathly afraid of truth being smothered and being the only one trying to save it.