Bin Laden

Last night I was awake around 3:30, because I had a fever that broke. While watching ESPN, trying to get scores from MLB and the NBA playoffs, "Breaking News: Bin Laden shot dead." Scrolled along the bottom of the screen. I was shocked.

To be honest, how many times have you heard, someone is dead or had just died and feel your heart sink. Almost always. When I saw that headline though, my brain corrected my heart and I tried to find anything with a live feed.

Fox News was camped out by ground zero. Of course they were right? After all, Bin Laden is to blame for the fall of the Twin Towers. In the background of the news casters shot, there were young New Yorkers, who were probably up and heard the news because they were drinking. Totally cool. But we all know how we react when we've had some drinks... A little more vocal, a little more crass.

What shocked me were the young people and some older people, holding and waiving flags chanting, "USA, USA..." Where did those flags come from at 3:30 in the morning? I never see them sold on the street that big. For some reason it made me sick. It was propaganda, materialized in our country. I felt like, where is our class? Here are these kids... most who looked like they were in their way early 20's and who were probably 10-12yrs old when it happened. I know everyone was affected for different reasons on 9/11 and someone reading this might now want to tell me to eff off. Sorry in advance if I hit a nerve.

But to see our youth waiving flags and chanting, "USA, USA.." in response to a horrible event that was triggered by horrible foreign policy years before they and really we were born... it made me sick. I felt it was classless. We should be better than that. It was just like the images you've see of third world nations when they react that way to a downed helicopter... I was just sickened and thought, where is the class? The silent contemplation. Fox News throws one camera crew on the street and drunk people wanna rally? Not one news caster made a comment about the age group out in the streets at that time and their mental state, but hailed their patriotism.

Death is death. It is sick that Bin Laden hated our country's government/foreign policies and took it out on our people. It's also sick that our government supported dictators for profit at the expense of people in other countries and without care, turned our backs on them and THEN invaded their country. These wars use us.

War is sick. War breeds more war. It is run by shitty people and has imposed it's will on all the people of the world. It kills people, it destroy's cities, it impoverishes nations and while a small few gain, it rallies 2 masses of people against each other. It uses good people. The us and them have more similarities than we think.

Ask yourself this,

1) When was the last time you had a fight?

2) Did you feel good in smashing someone in the face or getting the hell beat out of you?

3) Did you feel proud or embarrassed?

4) When you see the person you fought with, do you get anxiety? Do you feel like you have to hate them? Do you feel like they have to hate you? Do all those feelings come rushing back?

5) Were you honest about how the fight went in all aspects or did exaggerate so you look like a saint?

Fighting happens more times than not, when people respond to what they feel is unjust. When they have seen it and when they have heard it. If more people contemplated their actions, reactions and perceived outcomes, there would be a little more patience, a little more acceptance and a little more justification. I don't think we'll ever get rid of violence, but we should be able to moderate it. After all the history and all the atrocities, we should be better. There should be more peace. The whole situation sucks.

Dialogue on a Loop

Man, 4:45am can have you up as if it was 6pm and you worked all day. Exhausted but wide awake. Your brain reeling all the events unfinished and completed. Some crazy dialogue on a loop. And as you walk into the kitchen, mindlessly looking through the fridge and cabinets, there is a certain still about the house because everyone is sleeping but you.

Over the years, I have spent a lot of free time with people I consider friends. By free time, I mean, my work is done and I'm in need of a break from its minute to minute intensity. However, I don't want to run from work/life, I want to celebrate and dissect it a bit. Wether through code or shared stories that can be relatable, you learn from friends or become a better listener and confidant. Some separation time. Time to reflect from a distance. Friends to me are the space in which that distance resides.

But there is nothing worse than spending that time with people, coming together and sharing those moments only to figure out that some of those good times and conversations were spent with people you considered friends. To find out that the alterations you may have made through their enlightenment is ignored for whatever reason. You become devalued for action. Put down through omission or inflection of acknowledgement. This weekend shrunk my universe in that regard and reopened it to me and a smaller more intimate group. It became the most rewarding weekend of my life and showed me that the personal moments and most inner thoughts should only be shared with a few and that maybe, distance and space is what we need. Distance from our fleeting connectivity. After all, real growth separates us naturally.

Last Nights Dream...

How trite it is to start off a blog this way, I know, but last nights dream left an unshakable, calming impression.

I was friends with and at President Obama's house. Not the White House, but his actual home. I drifted off from the gathering and made my way into his bedroom and started to draw "Proportions of the Human Figure" by Leonardo de Vinci on his sheets in charcoal. He came in the room as I was doing this, with a framed picture he had taken and a dirty tee shirt neatly rolled up in his hands. Extending his arms toward me, he presented it.

He said, "This is a picture of a man in the aftermath of (some infamous) plane crash and the tee shirt I was wearing on the day I took this picture." He said, "This person was so confused but knew to walk away from the wreckage...traumatized and covered in soot, he knew to walk away." I looked at him, like, "Wow, he had the presence of mind to take this photo and was unhurt by the event. Lucky. Present. Aware enough to document what his eye saw and completely aware of his own mortality. That really made an impression on him."

As he finished the story, I looked up and he had changed the bedding, so my masterpiece was gone. He might have been angry, but decided instead to preoccupy my mind with a story. He erased what he considered, I don't know, maybe offensive, all while not hurting my feelings or by actually saying he was displeased with what I had done. Class.

We started out into the hallway and I said, "Do you remember the last time we spoke, what I had told you?"

He looked at me and said, "Mike, I'm the president, I..."

So before he could continue, I cut him off and said, "Yes, I understand. Well..." (some Friend he was...)

But as I was talking, he started rearranging these random pieces of styrofoam that were there on the floor in the hall, of all different shapes and sizes and he kinda stopped listening to me. Carefully, he picked up the pieces and placed them where he wanted them. He cocked his head sideways looking at the floor scene.

In looking at his arrangement, I saw there were spaces in between these mix-matched pieces of styrofoam. Wanting to redeem myself for drawing on the presidential sheets, I started making those spaces smaller by kicking them closer, though a bit haphazardly with my right foot. He became really annoyed and I grew a little more embarrassed. Calmly again, he looked at me and said, "Mike, you don't always need to fill everything in. "

And there it was right there. Sometimes, I guess, you try and make things happen. Maybe even force them and by doing so, you get the end result, but often times, not the desired result. Things are what they are sometimes and incomplete is not entirely all that bad, so long as you see the spaces that can be filled in between.

28 Days Later

Well, the video's went from horribly amateur to mildly tolerable. But you have to learn a lot to be mildly tolerable, and then, after a while, you realize any monkey can make a video... Guess the difference the whole thing made in me is that now, I'm happier monkey.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oeSMwHGZnQ4

A Song A Day

Last month, I was out with some friends gettin after a few drinks. While we were out smoking, they started singing some songs I wrote a while back in the street. I really thought they were making fun of me, but as it turns out, they actually liked the songs. For whatever reason and i'm sure i could think of a thousand of them, it made me feel great and and the same time weird...

Why the hell did they like it so much? Why is it that so many people say, man you write good tunes, why aren't you on the radio? Do they just like me as a person, just giving lip service, do they feel bad...trying to lift my spirits...talking just to hear themselves or hoping they can control me by seeing how far they can make me go with their suggestions?

They said, you can't just keep playing for the 4 of us, you have to get this stuff out there and at least see... good thought.. But I really just like playing. I like writing stuff and leaving it behind. Writing and playing music is like a cigarette, ya smoke it and toss the filter.