2010: Living and Giving

After looking back on the idea of another decade gone, I find myself thinking about my life as an evening news special: Looking Back on the Aughts. And I'll admit that at first, I didn't realize how much time has actually gone by or how considerably life has changed. At the turn of the century, it seemed our world was such a simpler place. Whereas then we worried about what would happen when Y2K hit and what would happen to our money and our computers when the clock hit midnight, now we can't board an airplane without a full colonoscopy courtesy of airport security. And I still can't watch an airplane flying over magnificent New York City without thinking about whether or not I'll be a witness to another kamikaze assault on liberty and democracy.

In 1999 the frustration was waiting for your modem to dial up (or getting kicked off if your sister needed to make a phonecall) and now it seems we can't go the length of a conversation without checking our phones for missed calls, emails, facebook updates, youtube comments, myspace friends, SMS texts, BBMs, and firmware updates. Sure, since the invention of the television, the nuclear family has been glued to their screens, but only in the last decade have we gotten to the point where everyone feels the need to be not only in front of a television, but on it. Or at least to watch how others may live their own boring lives in the "reality" sense. (It can be comforting to see how little other people do with their time as well, but I do not believe in measuring myself by other people's lifestyles.) And sadly enough, I have fallen victim to this along with my fellow gen x'ers. I have found myself in a place where I am reaching out via video postings, photos, and status updates/tweets, etc. to get as many eyes on me as possible, disappointed when a status update doesn't get enough comments or "likes". And for what? To what end?

This realization has put me on a new path towards a new destination: living to give. I don't think the great writers of human history were simply providing stuffing for heavy leatherbound quotationaries for your dorm shelf when they were writing things like:

"Find out how much God has given you and from it take what you need; the remainder is needed by others."
-- St. Augustine

"You give but little when you give of your possessions. It is when you give of yourself that you truly give."
-- Kahlil Gibran, philosopher

“Before giving, the mind of the giver is happy; while giving, the mind of the giver is made peaceful; and having given, the mind of the giver is uplifted.”
-- Buddha

"Before you speak, listen. Before you write, think. Before you spend, earn. Before you invest, investigate. Before you criticize, wait. Before you pray, forgive. Before you quit, try. Before you retire, save. Before you die, give."
-- William A. Ward {American Anthropologist

"Giving people a little more than they expect is a good way to get back more than you'd expect."
-- Robert Half

"It's not how much we give but how much love we put into giving."
-- Mother Teresa

"To give is to love and to love is to live."
--Unknown

These are some of the greatest minds we know - the movers and shakers of the cerebral realm. At the age of 26, I have so much to be grateful for, and yet I so often find myself lamenting over something I can't seem to identify. And it is with all the conviction in the world that I say that this sadness is due to an exhausting search to receive rather than give. It may have taken longer than it should have to learn this, but alas, I have learned. And now, with two feet firmly planted in the will to give, I feel the smile that has been hiding, creeping back to my face. It is as if I already know how much happier I will be, and how much happiness I can bring to others.

So that being said, I encourage you to go out give of yourself.
Make someone laugh not to prove you're funny, but to lift his spirits.
Make someone smile not to appeal charming, but to bring them happiness.
Help someone out not to gloat that you did, but in hopes that it will encourage them to do the same for someone else.

There is no smile too big, no compliment too courteous, and no life lived with too much love.

Give. It is what we are supposed to do.

It's your life. Live it such that you'll love it.

Big Bang

Big bang, I read in some article
I'm a disarray of brainwaves and subatomic particles
And today I'm living like an animal
Slaving away on a chain just like a criminal
Subliminal message aggressive vegetative state
Well you can be in the right mind and shine in the wrong place
All the hands I was shaking and all the shit I've been taking
It's like I'm bluffing and faking and hating every day
So now I'm packing my boxes and rocking out in the street
And like a farmer at the doctor I'm a drop a sick beat

You know what its like when your mind goes on strike
and life may as well pass you by
And routines form circles that started as hurdles
and turn into zeros you're leaving behind
We all try to write the biography we'd like to read and believe is
Real life and not just some fantasy sci fi you watch on tv

This is what we've got whoa is it good enough?
This is what we've got whoa is it good enough?
This is what we've got whoa is it good enough
For you?

I face the morning in the noose of a neck tie
Wearing the white collar, telling the white lies
Alarm clock, rocking buzzing and screaming
And taking me away from the freedom of dreaming
Floating through the air with the greatest of ease
I got imagination engine and wings made of sheets
Like Icarus I
Am flying too high
And getting to close to sun
The wings on my back
Are burning at last
And now I'm gonna crash into a life that I own
I'd given up on love
And it ain't no crime
I'd given up on love
You came at just the right time
So now I'm thanking my sources while the microphone's hot
Like a Ying Yang twin I'm gonna beat this box

This is what we've got whoa is it good enough?
This is what we've got whoa is it good enough?
This is what we've got whoa is it good enough
For you?

All the people I know well they call me a stranger
The things I don't learn I can never forget
And I always feel safe when there's imminent danger
The greater your fate when you got no regrets
This dimension you're censoring tension considering
eggshells are blistering cutting your feet
Have I got your attention if so I should mention
the instrumentation of rocking a beat

Well in my head, there's just one girl with so many faces around this world
She gets me goods, she got me right
So lemme take a second to mention what she's like:

She's one heartbreaking drug addict
Music television wannabe fanatic
(beat) She's on my level but her frequency's static
Running through the circuit working traffic
Got tats all over her body
Not the kind of girl you wanna show your mommy
Blowing rings of smoke while drinking
Set on fire battleship sinking
She taking off on a project runway
Sleeping through church on every Sunday
Beats Johnny and the devil on fiddle
Squeezing her tooth paste tube in the middle
Like a t-shirt, wears me out
Even though I know it she will bring me down

This is what we've got whoa is it good enough?
This is what we've got whoa is it good enough?
This is what we've got whoa is it good enough
For you?

So take your love and pack it up and send it care of me
So take your love and pack it up and send it care of me
So take your love and pack it up and send it care of me
Ad nauseum

Inquiry...

If there was a chicken pot pie recipe that substituted out the chicken for rabbit, would it be called a Hare Pie?

The Boxer

I am a boxer
I have spent my life in sin
There's a price for pride and honor
There's a cost for weighing in

I am a boxer
Armored with a shattered heart
No desire for redemption
No attention to my scars

I am a boxer
I have broken many bones
Though I've slept in many places
I have never called them home

I am a boxer
I have taken many lives
Leaving children without fathers
Taking husbands from their wives

I am a boxer
Black and blue from self-defense
Sutures hold my faith together
Iron cools my loneliness

I am a boxer
Who has never learned to cry
Though I've never been a champion
I have fought for all my life

Well I guess this is growing up...

I think it's a sign of maturity that I now appreciate the cookie portion of an Oreo so much more than I used to.

Where You Gonna Run?

A young boy on the beach in the winter,
His eyes to the sky and his toes in the sand
He stands ready at the edge of the water
With the smooth of the stone in the palm of his hand
He can not help bu think about, wonder:
the possibility of reaching her door
And while he knows all the laws that oppose him,
the thought of the rock on the ocean floor

Where you gonna run, where you gonna hide
Whatchoo gonna think about with nothing on your mind
Who you gonna trust, who you gonna doubt
When you're outside and you can't run out
Whatchoo gonna say, whatchoo gonna do
Who you gonna talk to, who you gonna talk to
Who's gonna talk to you
How could you believe in something you were never seeing
Now you're dying to agree to a situation you can't prove

Part afraid of the current situation,
A little unsure of the consequence
But confident that in the moment he was breathing
He couldn't lose a thing that he didn't have yet
Eyes closed and a heart wide open
He fired that stone to the middle of the sea
He didn't know, would it go where he wanted,
But it would surely end up where it needed to be

The small ripple it created in the ocean,
It grew larger over days and days
And like a feeling oh it grew so quickly,
And like emotion it became a great wave
That traveled far over earth and water,
And moved on with no remorse
Back home he was shrugging his shoulders,
The stone's weight was a cure and a source

Where you gonna run, where you gonna hide
Whatchoo gonna think about with nothing on your mind
Who you gonna trust, who you gonna doubt
When you're outside and you can't run out
Whatchoo gonna say, whatchoo gonna do
Who you gonna talk to, who you gonna talk to
Who's gonna talk to you
How could you believe in something you were never seeing
Now you're dying to agree to a situation you can't prove

See the moment of the recent situation
Was all right but the timing was wrong
And so I'm standing at the edge of the water,
Casting my stone in the form of a song
And maybe waves are just a little more subtle
than the words that I've written in the lines of this tune
I couldn't take the chance of water freezing over
When the sun goes down and the winter takes June

Four

Monday mornings are tough enough. This particular Monday morning, I was greeted with "Hey B, can you believe it? Today's your four year anniversary.

Four years. Fours year. Four. Years. Of my life. Four years of my early and mid twenties. Four years of progressively less hair, less chance of a second growth spurt, less chance of being influential in any way at a "young age", or being rich at a young age. Four years.

I was 21 when I started working here? Should I have taken those words of wisdom from a coworker when, right after college, I started working a desk job: "Hey. Get the hell outta here. What are you doing? You just finished school. You're young. No family to support, no mortgage, no car payments... nothing. You're free. You've got the rest of your life to work."

I'm at that point that I committed to four years ago where I've saved a few bucks, gotten my feet planted in the music world, and am ready to do what I want to do.

Not for Nothing

Not for nothing, but for four years I have worked in a sales office where euphemisms, proverbs, and mix and matched idioms. I decided to channel my fuming hatred for sayings like "it is what it is" and "well, there are a couple ways you can skin an egg without letting a goose out of the bag" and make a song out of it. Wanna hear it? Here it goes:

Not For Nothing
After a lifetime of walking on glass
Stepping on everybody's toes
Dancing on eggshells don't seem so bad
So long as everybody knows
You've grown too big for the boots that you own
Footnotes are all you can sing

A mile in my shoes is a feat you would lose
But oh no, not for nothing

An ounce of prevention's a pounds worth of cure
And bigger is better so they say
And maybe it's true that patience is a virtue
And good things'll find you if you wait
Sooner is better than later I hear
But only a fool rushes in

Both you and I are a victim of time
But oh, no not for nothing

If wishes were horses then beggers would ride
Trying to find rainbows and gold
While others are working their fingers to the bone
It's hard as nails selling your soul
We're going down in a big lead ballon
Caught in a fatal tail spin

I realize we're all dropping like flies
But oh no, not for nothing

If I had a penny for every time
You speak to help ease my mind
I'd have more sense than the good lord himself
But your word ain't worth a dime
I wanna be where there's money on trees
So talk wouldn't have to be so cheap
And eating your words is so hard to afford
If you really are what you eat

Biting off more than can be chewed by one man
Oh no, not for nothing
Lord I can see your tongue tied in your cheek
Oh no, not for nothing
At the end of the day, whatever you say
Oh no, not for nothing

The Jokers Stand

The idea of a world run by clowns like my friends and me blows my mind. I am almost certain we would destroy the planet due to a lack of discipline, respect, and order. But if you write a song about that, you end up sounding an awful lot like Twisted Sister. And nobody wants that. Nobody. Take that same idea, have it take place somewhere deep in the annals of histroy, inject it with a medieval vernacular, and it almost sounds respectable. Premise: World falls apart when run by jokers. Jack up the metaphor of "playing around" by making a playing card analogy of said feudal system - just in case it wasn't obvious enough. You know, "dealing" with "jokers" and all. Here's a start...

Jokers Fall / House of Cards

Kings are walking through the croft and guard the market square
Locking peasants up in stocks while queens watch from upstairs
And over all the madness as the knaves they sharpen knives
Pacing, waiting for the day when they'll lay down their lives
The only two refusing suits who sit above the court
A pair of jokers living high above a trembling floor

In the distance from the bastion
Rising danger draws attraction
Soon enough this chain reaction
Attacks them at their door

And trick by trick the games you play
Will bring you down
And brick by brick this house of cards
Is coming down

Nipples on my chest, I got nipples on my chest...

Recently I have been toying with the idea for a song that is a hip-hop, rap-style sing-a-long with a refrain that goes something like this:

Nipples on my chest,
Nipples on my chest,
I got nipples on my chest
Nipples on my chest

Nipples on my chest,
Nipples on my chest,
I got nipples on my chest
Nipples on my chest

I feel very strongly that the words are simple enough for even the newest, least interested crowd member to remember. And it gets stuck in your head.

I am currently being reminded of this by the Russian guy in my office who wears thin dress shirts with no undershirt. Those large brown circles are ruining my day. They're like huge pregnant pimples about to explode through the skin that is his sateen, fitted, Geoffrey Beene shirt.