Motivationally Speaking

This is my call out to all the world's positive people: Where are you? Come out. I want to surround myself amongst every single one of you and let your leaves intermingle mine. I want to become the branches that support you. I want your flesh to be at one within me, to transform our joined skin into the bark, so that we can all become the trunk that supports us. I want to direct my energies to lifting you up and in turn be lifted in kind to higher levels of being. I am sick of the weight of carrying the burden, of always trying to push those up that always want to hold me down. So positive people step forward, and turn your leaves towards the sun. The time for self hate and cowering blind is over. Step into the light and embrace. Embrace me. Embrace yourselves. Let us all carry the weight together with our tap roots sunk firm and deep beneath the earth so that when the wind blows, we all sway.
-fin

Ladies and Gentlemen, I do believe that this now officially concludes our brief experiment with Raw: an ongoing work of ...art? Yes, I know, shocking. Especially because in the end Raw failed entirely to be anything resembling what I had intended.

Raw wasn't a complete failure, it gave me two very different and solid ideas for short stories I may or may not work on at some point. It also gave me countless ideas for poetry and lyrics, that again, maybe someday I'll go back to.

Truth be told after a week of nonstop writing, and the last two days spent simply combing over the pages and pages of abstract thought, I finally was able to make sense of some things. Not everything. I've still got a million questions, many of which make me lose sleep at night, but a small gain is still a gain.

For now, I think this piece is a perfect and fitting conclusion for this experiment, and I hope you all find it the same. I'm going to leave you all with this very beautiful quote I was lucky enough to be shown, because it fits:
"Make yourself as small as possible. Then grow."
-Unknown Source

Saul Williams Quote.

"...And it is my compassion for all who suffer, whether under suppressive rule or the silent rule of tradition and militant sheepishness, those who feel powerless in the face of change, who wish things would be different but have no idea how to go at it alone; those who feel alone, who feel compelled to “think different” beyond the trademark of their times, who only need a single spark to be the light that outshines history, those who dare not be shrouded by religious mystery; it is because of my belief in the power of art to act like a B vitamin: flush the system and dislodge the fat and disease from the tissue surrounding the heart and brain; because I want my shot at the virus, and because I think apathy is a plague and want to rid the slow of progress from it’s time-consuming glitches…."



Read the whole thing on Saul William's myspace. http://bulletins.myspace.com/index.cfm?fuseaction=bulletin.read&authorID=13395348&messageID=6603923180

Concluding Raw

So there is definitely more than enough brainstormed material in the last several days work. I promised a part 2 to brainstorming, but it isn't coming. I had planned to conclude the brainstorming on Dec 1st but instead I took the day off to try and live a healthier life. By Dec 2, I had already moved on from the brainstorming.

The good news is is that I was able to sift through all of the raw thought fragments and I came up with two different story ideas from all the chaos and an indeterminable number of potential songs and/or poems.

So here's the new plan, I'm going to focus on one of the story ideas, but I'm not sure which yet. I'm going to spend the next several days working up intros for both, then I'll post them, and then maybe you can tell me which one you want me to write, we can all vote on it or something, and maybe I'll listen.

Raw: An ongoing work of... art? Brainstorming Part 1

Just for the record I've gone ahead and added some of my own notes as I did my nightly transcribing from the notebook to the screen, so when you see something like [this] [know that it is just me adding commentary. At the end I do a little wrap up called... Wrap Up: Trying to make sense of it all... yeah, good luck with that one.]

11/30 approx. 3am
Once again I can’t sleep, I have to get up in five hours and run for at least a mile to prove to myself I can, then I have to more work; guess I’m on borrowed time right now.
Did I ever tell you about my pirate-ninja dream? It was pretty epic. That’s the weird things about dreams; most people claim they can’t remember them, until come the ones they really can, then someone gets hung out to dry.
Too many thoughts, can’t slow them down enough to grasp a single one.
[Here things are finally starting to come together and I can begin to glimpse a cohesive whole, so I’ve snipped some things that are simply not ready to be revealed. Author’s rights of course. ;-P]
11/30 approx 11am
So I ran a mile one point five, maybe, tops. It was less then I wanted but exactly what I expected. I could have gone harder, but what was the reason I wanted to?
Now I’ll enjoy the day while waiting to get out on the water
…just filter up through all the bullshit till it’s like oh yeah? This is what I have forgot.
…everyone’s got their own demons trying hard to eat them up… if winter never ends will you ever see my spring?
If this is all we have is there nothing left to bring?
…everybody’s dreaming we’re all just in different states of waking up… Tell “Kirk” to bring us cigarettes please, and tell him I’ll reimburse; it’s just one more barter/trade example spun in different verse…and why is it you always have something with you; you don’t need and why is it you never bring it with you when you do?
[snip snip]
… just want to throw myself outside the window and let myself feel left alive; anything must be better than the dead I feel inside… So I’ll run and I’ll smoke, I’ll quit and I’ll choke, live this life of self destruction long enough to… to…
I spent the better half of the day barefoot, trying to get back to my roots… because the world’s so misaligned that we spend all our time staring back at space, and never seeing much
[snippity. Here’s a tease, structure and form for… FnLinLO]
…and finally after a chaotic morning I’m on the boat again still just trying to figure out from where the water it all began…
…you’re exactly what I’ve always wanted, but never really got; the point just keeps repeating—the world and it’s whole entire lot is ground beef mixed up, jumbled, scrambled and forgot.
[snip, some notes on how I would restructure and begin to edit this process tonight that you don’t need to see.]
…I can destroy my feet I can destroy my knees; I can destroy my legs all the way through to my hip; but it’ll never prove because it is the one connection that we missed; and I realize it’s just life’s wavelengths struggling to coexist
A Writer’s Daily Checklist
-hats are sacred, never lose a fucking hat
-sunglasses are always good
-a plethora of cigarettes to always have on hand for you to smoke.
-water, water, water
-run two miles at 6.a.m.
-kayak, live, and
-WRITE!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
P.S. And somewhere along the way… die.

…and I take a toast for ocean sorrowing, morose I whisper, ever succinctly spoken regret; ‘Yeah, Ocean… here’s to that’ and quickly flick my cigarette over starboard to the ocean now begat. Forgive me ocean, I want to whisper, please forgive me that… and I realize it’s just the artist’s dilemma universally begot / he arrives before his time arrives and is just as quick, as he is, as is, forgot.
11/30 approx. 4pm Good bye to November
…it is going to be rough working with me tonight.
-and I found myself in water lounging making time come stand and be forgot
-it’s the entire ninja-pirate complex that is so quickly all forgot we all are either, either neither are, they all are or they are not?


[WRAP UP: Trying to make sense of it all: whew… that’s not even the half of everything I got written today, I think it’s suffice to say that I almost have enough brainstormed material to start coming up with something a little more cohesive. Which, even though it has only just begun, would mean the end of Raw: an ongoing work of… art? Well, at least it is bound to at a certain point eventually, become less Raw and will have moved up to whatever it is that comes next, Almost Prepared maybe? (I could use a catchy jingle here wordsmiths, if you are reading ;-P), Anyway, I’m not going to devote anymore time to brainstorming ideas tonight, because, truth be told, we could spend our entire lifetimes brainstorming and never get anywhere but a whole bunch of good ideas. It’s easy to get caught up and overwhelmed. I have some ideas for how I’d like to transform what you’ve been following over the last couple days into a story, I’m going to be letting those ideas percolate over the next couple of days, in the meantime we’ll ride out the brainstorm process a bit more and let you linger over just how extremely grotesque it is in the beginning of the arts. See you tomorrow for Raw: An ongoing work of... art? Brainstorming, part 2... oh did someone mention audio clips? ;-P]

Leave me something.

-AiG.

Introducing Raw: An ungoing work of. . . art?

Yes, ladies and gentlemen you heard that right, tonight on AiGtv we are introducing Raw: an ungoing work of. . . art? "What is this titillating and tantalizing tale," you ask? Or rather, roll your eyes and try to forget my horrible usage of grammar.

Ahem,

What I mean to say is, I thought my grace period was over, but apparently it had ideas all it's own of becoming something so much more. It came to me as the lamenting died: three day's grace is just not enough. No, this was destined for something more. This was rallied to be a muse. And as long as this muse is alive I feel compelled to ride it out.

I know whoever still bothers to read this is probably thinking "okay, okay, enough of this angsty-emo shit already!" To that I say... loud and clear, I HEAR YOU!

But a muse is a muse and when it speaks an artist moves. It takes you through trees and takes you through climbs, it speaks through your limbs, your brain becomes vines...

It's pretty scary some of the things it tells me to do, but like all jobs, we just gotta suck it up and do what we're told. My apologies to all those out there that don't want to hear it.

Raw: An ungoing work of. . . art?
11/29

...So you'll swallow me up / you'll eat me whole / cuz it's the whole damn world that's spiraling violently out of control / you'll break me apart and see right under my skin, you'll stitch me up, put me right under your chin, just to let me drop and do it over again... and all of this is just me screaming through the throng, that I really need a family, or just some place I can belong...

...I am nothing, without meaning, I am something, I am something lack'd / just how much self loathing must I sift through to find that hidden latch?

This is my final cry... there isn't anything that I can do just holler away at nothing wishing that I can come home to you...
This is my final cry the last few things that I have to do / before I fall away from this world with you...
This is my final cry the very last thing I'll say before...

And that's okay maybe I'll just get mislabeled more and ride this wave until it's collapse, where earth and sky meet water to gently lapse her shore.

This is my final cry the very last thing that I'll say before I lie / just get me outta here there's too much room in this head, there's so much living going on around me I just might as well be dead...

You told me not to hide / so I'll just keep on stupid screaming hoping they say I never lied... at least until this spark has died...
But I gotta keep on writing as long as this muse is still alive / I'm gonna look obsessive, but thats a label I have to ride / either that or crawl back under the rock where first I lied.

...Throwing all our money out the window just to be pissed off we're here...

...black obsidian the world's most negative force...

...and I realize I have become my cat; or is it he has become me? when all he's doing is stupid screaming for having been left behind; I needed a muse and I found it in you... and you, and you andyouandyouandyou... and me.

-to be concluded-

Now, if I still have you after all that, all of you are really to be commended. So what is Raw? Okay, here's my idea: Raw is all this mindless drivel my brain has been concocting over the last several days. Raw will be whatever mindless drivel my brain concocts over the course of well, however long it decides to concoct.

You see that's the beauty of it, all this angsty emo crap I've got on here is the rawest ingredients for a work of... art? I don't know, maybe I could call it art. Certainly it is set with the aspirations of art, but that all remains yet to be seen.

The whole point, I'm making is that with Raw, I'm going to be showing you the readers exactly how someone takes his angsty, emo, and abstract drivel and turns it into something more.

I'll show you my progress as I sift and restructure this crap to make a song, or a story, or a poem, or anything. I don't even know what it is yet, let alone have any idea what it could be. I first have to know what it is...

And when I do figure out exactly what [this] is you can all be damn sure you'll hear it here first on Raw: An ungoing work of. . . art?

Fear and Loathing near Los Olas...

Admittedly things have been a little moody and brooding over here the last several days. Well, The three day grace period is over so I can't keep wallowing for myself. I do however, humbly, ask that you deal with it for one more day as I post the drivel my mind cooked up yesterday. I'm leaving everything unedited again, raw and rough around the edges, because well... I'm feeling a little raw and rough around the edges myself.

The Last One Month
So the last month to you, you were sitting and blue, you were stuck in the ground, you didn’t know your way around, and the last month to you It was all that we knew you were stuck and confused, and the last month to me wasn’t quite sweet(quite that way sweet but it was) it was great, it wasn’t beat, the last month to you was all that we knew, with everyone shelved up with regret and confused, and I’m sorry to say it came to be this way, I’m sorry to say, I never knew you, anyway.
And the last month to you was just a drowned out scream, the last month to me was a short lived, fleeting dream, I just want to say, sorry that it went down this way.
So the last month to you was hollow and used and everything showed up eventually.
The last month to you was hollow and blue
the last month to me I held hallow’d and new,
and the last month to you haunts in your memory
like a drowning scream
and the last month to me I held too closely
like trying to grasp the waking dream
While the last month to me,
was a good month to be,
by your side.
While the last month to you,
after the bullshit problems and struggles
everything died.


...and I see another cycle like in the way that things began; to the that they are ending / ending in our hands; and words they seem so fleeting; so easily forgot; upside down and all around; a mixed up jumbled lot; said and said and just as easily dismissed; the words and feelings just keep running, run the entire gamut.


...you have to grow, to spread your leaves and fly; otherwise you will be stunted and poignantly maligned; you'll find yourself ne'er growing, and to be predestinely-declined, those friendships ever going; are so delicate entwined; that those things are ever fleeting and fade before the mind / can ever make sense of the truth...


"I know what she means... but I don't know what I said..."


...too many thoughts are still a reeling and the glories they all fade; a distant safe word never spoken and the habitually inlaid; why is it my mind is only spoken when my thoughts of sense cannot be made? I guess it's a product of devolving... or forever growing?

Fort Liquorhell... dreamily going from the last best thing to the next worse thing waiting for that real thing that doesn't really live. People just keep going giving, given, take, get, and 'gin. No one really knows just what they're doing not until the end; when everything in life was realized and the next phase can begin.
-fin-

Maybe someday, I'll be able to make sense of all this myself.