Conscious

There was time when I didn’t care all that much about conventions. I knew what I liked, and didn’t feel any need to justify my tastes. Making music in bands during high school was a different process entirely from the way I try to make music (or don’t) now, and I miss it. I miss how effortless it seemed, at least by comparison. Granted, I understand music better now. I’m a better player, a better composer with more refined sensibilities and more critical ears.

That’s the problem; I’m too critical. I’m so critical, in fact, that not only is it significantly more difficult to be proud of (or even get excited about) music, but more often then not I can’t even bring myself to make music all together. I’m not even that interested in finding new records, something that used to inspire me to try new things.

I’m so conscious of not being “good enough” for myself and others, that I won’t even begin to try. This extends to other areas, too.

What’s frustrating is that—without being arrogant—I know I’m capable of good work. I think I have talent. I’m just afraid to use it, that my work won’t stand out, or that I’ll fail…so I haven’t. Yet.

If you can understand that feeling, you’ll likely understand a lot about me.

Best Laid Plans

I’m guilty of this too from time to time, but it seems to happen to me a lot lately:

Somebody–an old friend, an old flame*, recent acquaintance, hot friend of a friend of a friend I hardly know (yet)**, etc.– says they want to hang out.
And then I say something like, “Great! I’d like to too.”
Sometimes they go so far as to say, “we should hang out” or “we need to hang out” or even just “we’ll hang out.” Just like that, like it’s 100% for sure going to happen. (Afterall, we need to. This–apparently–is not up to either of us, nor is it a subject for debate.)
I say, “Great! Let me know when you’re free and we’ll make plans. Just give me a call.”
Sometimes I even suggest a time, say when I’m free and when I’m not, etc.

And then nothing happens.

The ball’s in their court now, right? I mean, they DID say they wanted to get together. I DID reciprocate that interest. If they want to close the deal on meeting at some point in the future, they need only to say so. Of course I could always re-ask/offer again or whatever, but sometimes it’d be weird.** Sometimes you just can’t.*

A Synthesis

The Chamber Street JMZ station usually smells like the inside of an ice-skating rink warming house in mid-July, like mildew and urine. Yesterday they hosed it down with bleach. While this didn’t necessarily get rid of the previous stench, the odors intertwined into a new potpourri. Now it smells like a public pool locker room.

No. What you’ve been is not on a boat…

Lately I’ve found myself feeling a little down when I finally get home from work. It has nothing to do with the work, which I generally enjoy despite not being paid for it (while an internship may not be a job, it is still most definitely work). It has nothing to do with anything, really. Or rather (to pull a Stoppard) it has everything to do with nothing.

It’s just like: “Okay, I’m home…

…what do I do now?”

Let it be known:

As of three o’clock in the afternoon Eastern Standard Time on Saturday of the eleventh day of the eleventh month in the year of our Lord two-thousand and six, I will receive a key to a room in an apartment in a building in a respectably ungentrified neighborhood a little East of Williamsburg, a little West of Bed-Stuy in the borough of Brooklyn in the fair city of New York, and I will call it “home.”