untitled ramblings 2019

They definitely call it grinding for a reason. The image of an ornate, intricately patterned wood piece - fading away as it slowly turns against a sanding belt... that's the type of grind they're referring too.
The type of grind that washes away the jet black from your personality and replaces it with spotting strands of silver grey, that's not what you meant when you said with the years you would stand out. The type of grind that shreds apart your personality like the cloths that that start to split as you just inch out a bit from the top, the awkward stare into the mirror only looks different because of the dust between your wrinkles.

I kid. As always there's some parallels between my mood and the descriptions of the climb that has been the last couple of years. To say that I knew exactly where I was going to end up, would be a complete lie. If there was one thing I can say I didn't miss forecasting was how happy I would make myself. 

It's emboldening to reread the words I had sprawled to fill the empty calls of the bits available on here. Thoughts and ideas of someone perhaps confused about the motives and callings available. I haven't changed. It's the truth though, I am the same confused and struggling kid from 2013 as I am in 2019.  It's for the better. To be someone who you know than to turn into something you didn't expect. Life has challenged me and grinded away so much of what was on that top level but the grooves, the crevices, the initial spark of personality never has gone away and it was important that it was recognizable to me as a feeling and not as an image.

We can not see what we do not expect. It is as true today

Resurfaced Words

It's been three years.

My emotions have changed just as much as the climate in Orange County. My Responsibilities have lessened only to be replaced with things of much more density. My job, my life, has become a step closer to the age-old idea "doing what you love, and getting paid for it.". I'm thankful that I am where I am today but I also respect that all of the world around me has been shaped by own hands. Where I am today is directly due to where I put myself, and in-between almost dying, having a kid, and all the life-altering substances and events, lies a view of the light at the end of the tunnel. A little less Rockstar DJ/Label Founder and a lot more Monthly-Residence-at-the-local-club-maybe-a-modest-design-gig. You know, that grandiose idea that somewhere - later on in life, things are just going to be okay. 

It's funny because even I know: things are never great Just okay.

I always think that we can never really be "great" without considering all the risks we didn't take. All the opportunities completely immature to their promise that it all seemed so stupid. Live in reality my boss once said to me and I took that heart. If I live in reality and according to some, reality only exists inside my head, why shouldn't I be trying to get exactly what I want? 

I'm doing this time for me. That's the difference between then and now. 

Things are naturally inclined to grow.

Even the absence of anything, space, is naturally inclined to grow. I climbed in your arms, and you pulled away. The new cavity that you moved into my heart today left me so alone. And the more it seems that I'm there, the more I realized that you weren't. A desert without lizards, an ocean without the moon and sun, I don't see how it could be so lonely out here but it is. I need to know you're listening. I need to know you're out there.

We're all losers

The TV is on, its going from channel two all the way to four hundred and two. I can only observe the talking heads that never provide anything new, they exaggerate and pervert our life instead. They take the essence of our conversations, of our problems, of our ideas and throw them against the wall until they splat into an unrecognizable image. I look at my life and I look at yours, and I wonder if what we're doing is really worth anything. And if it's not, good, at least you can turn on the television and really enjoy something. This only makes me think that maybe we should accept failure, maybe we should accept dismal earnings as long as someone else is enjoying their life.

Maybe my job is to keep them on their horse.

Freedom doesn't have the same ring as it used too. I sit and think and wonder what it is exactly that I'm trying to do with myself. And the truth is that all I want is to be happy. I don't want a million dollars, I don't want a load of cars or tons of woman. Happiness seems to be a rare resource pushed aside by the immediate satisfaction brought from cash. This depression in America doesn't stem from an economy with no stability, it doesn't come from a shortage of consumers or jobs; but from inside each and everyone of the persons hooked on to their vices with no true idea of who they are, but a firm grasp of who everyone else is. What we have is a shortage of dreamers, what we have is a depression of ambitions, so content to enjoy what little we have while we restlessly watch others who have it all. We cry, whine and whimper, but where are the real emotions? Where is the anger? Where is the happiness, the ability to be human to another human?

Bankrupt on emotions, a total foreclosure of humanity.

I know where I am in this world, I just don't understand where this world is. I feel completely and utterly out of place, I have no ambition to integrate with society in Orange County. I don't understand Orange County, let alone its inhabitants. What happened to all the dreams of our early ancestors? What happened to all the culture and pride my people had?

What's going to happen to our future I wonder as I watch life happening elsewhere on this screen. This window to this alien world I have never seen. Money is no object, humanity faces no danger in this world, why do we allow ourselves to be the exception in reality where we have to live in constant fear, struggle, and total lack of rationality?

Freedom just isn't the same anymore. Free from pests and trouble, not free from chains and cages.

random writings from the toilet seat

The jukebox shuffles, Alice Cooper all the way to Led Zepplin, but the needle falls on this liitle rare gem. The piano hits the low end of the scale while the bass plays a heavy E. Truth is you can't realize how nice the rhythm is until the horns come in slowly but they still only accentuate your voice. Not an angel but rather a star, a diva, someone I could only think about in my dreams to sing the kind of chrous you do. That line lifts and the vibrato dissapears and you sing from the heart, not the stomach. Your hand tight around the microphone, your supple lips part and out flies the chorus that the 2,000-plus people in the club have been waiting for.
"I told you how long ago," your words rang "All the time in the world, i've had a thing for you." The strobe lights blinked, the darkness erupted inbetween the dazzle of electric lights that rang throughout the room, yet even still I kept my gaze deep and fixed. A smile crept up one side, slowly filling the gap in your dimples when you sang after the breakdown "You got to keep that chin up, I'm going to come back here for that for that phone number". Was it for me? It didn't matter the lights dimmed and flashed, sparked and spilled all over the dance floor and my gaze locked still to your honey brown eyes, that long black hair that danced and teased; my ideas, wit, and humor, completely lacking in this moment of total infatuation. There you were, wide smile and big bright eyes, and I just watched in awe as perfection walked right out.
The night was cold, full of that alley-piss stench in the bar. I wondered if I could ever meet you again under these dim lights. Dim because I was only considerable under those conditions, otherwise I would have acted upon the twinkle in your eyes, the smile you flashed, but truth be told, I could just be crazy.

abcde

What you need to understand is the concept of things crashing. Yeah, I mean things colliding into each other...but I'm talking about millions and millions of miles per hour. Even billions and billions of miles per hour. You look at the galaxy and wonder about its structure and it's chaotic state where everything is spinning and rotating while being flung millions of miles in every direction but you can't lose sight of the inevitable end to the whole thing, collision.

[break]IDEAS

My life I thought had rhythm. I thought that everything while chaotic on its own found harmony as a full structure

I am an idol. I know there is at least one person out there that idolizes me, how many in your fan club? At least one. If you can't even get to one though, you have major problems.

The way I see it, I am the exact person my 13 year old self would think is cool. That's just the way I've always seen it though and that's because I don't even know what's cool anymore.

It's not that I hate local bands, honestly. I just hate that I am watching a local band, when I could just jam just as well and look way better on stage.

Untitled 3

He closed the door, put the bags on the floor, and took in the living room scene. He was alone again, and confirmed this by letting out a gasp of total defeat. He walked into the kitchen, and once again was defeated by loneliness. His feet dragged behind him as he walked towards the couch, dropping himself into its warm comfort and immediately began to mope.
Tears, sympathy, sadness
Tired, his eyes focued tenderly towards the reminders. They focused on Dinner with the family, they focused on decisions made regarding the two of them, they focused on long talks that ended in sex, they focused on how completely of an empty life he led. It was their life. Not his.
The pain and suffering of something that was never meant to last. Of an idea that lasted too long to actually turn into memory.

untitled 2

Subtle. I would call you subtle. I'd call you subtle because you did the subtle things right, when you did the rest of it wrong.

This is the end

You see, you have to hit bottom, and then you can get a visual perspective of ''up'' and plan accordingly. Especially in todays world of spontaneously well planned subrban lives, you can't really know yourself until you've destroyed yourself. So really, hitting bottom is like the Disney version of Jim Morrison's life, except this time he didn't overdose on barbiturates and heroin in a nasty as fuck restroom stall but instead went on to become a mentor and father of three.
First of all, it's dark. Pitch black dark. You can't see the bottom coming and it scares you even more, because you never stop falling. You extend your arms to claw at the walls, you flail your body open to catch some air under you but it doesn't matter because suddenly your 19 years too young and in the emergency room for an overdose of intoxicants.
You wake up, your arm is hurting from all the IV protrusions but you're too fucked up on morphine to even realize you hit rock bottom. You sleep, you groan, you live your life and you wake up not remembering the horrible circumstances and unpleasant memories you made for yourself...and trot...trot down the same beaten path, falling forever down the same well. What they need to do for rehabilitation is tape the whole thing so you can watch it when you're "better" and you can see what a complete ass you made of yourself as you wallowed in your own vomit right before you die.

Deep water

I spent my last 50 bucks
responsibility just aint my thang
spending it like water
ohyou know its bound to come back
what do you do when the lake goes dry
money dont fall from the sky

I spent the last 700 days...
I spent the last 700 days doing my punk rock routine.


I just took my last puff
sober living aint for me
breathing it in like it was air
oh you know its bound to grow back
aint got money, i aint got time
all i have is my punk rock routine.

End lesson:

And we liked to party
and we kept it live
and we had a three volume tome of contemporary slang
to keep a handle on all this jive

-rod

It doesn't matter what we do

I could feel

your warmth.

You held me tight and dug your nails into my back. I remember when I dipped my face into your hair, that smell that drove me crazy filled my breath with ecstasy. You and me enveloped into one, pushing ourselves together again. That warmth filled the room, growing more and more as we forced each other closer. Your fingers trailed along teasing my skin that begged for more, Your small hand tightened around my arm as you dug your fingers into my skin after every breath. Oh but how momentous was it when I stood apart and we gazed into each others eyes for a second admiring the beauty of our skins.

I stared into your eyes and remembered that gaze. There had been many times when I had stared into your eyes and knew what they said. I am sure that I had given you the same look so many times, "I want you." I yelled with a look, blinked and screamed "I NEED YOU."

[end]

Nude

Words come and go
They are like my breath, constant and always recharging
They are like my weapons, loaded and ready

I have so much to say, so much to exclaim. So much to settle with the world but never enough time to structure my words! The papers are on the floor, the notebooks in the car, and my pen - where is my pen? Mess! Too many words and not enough time to organize them.

Then blam.

You hit me so hard I can't keep myself from being breathless. You make me speechless. The things you can do to me and the ways you can make me feel are ultimately distressing at the end of the day because I can't be with you. Ohhhhh and why not....

Why not....why couldn't I? Didn't I take care of you?
I've seen your biggest smile, I'm in the middle of your picture. You're hung tight around me.
I'm in the middle of the picture.

Pleasure, peace, love, comfort, religious

Call it what you want but it was my something else. I think back and try not too, its the worst when I see you away from me, being OK. I want you to be ok and I want you to feel horrible. I want you to miss me damnit.

-rod

There's nothing wrong with me...

Loving you. I know that this emptiness would disappear if I could fill the giant void you left when you walked away but although its been grueling I've been putting up with it. Letting it tear me up. The truth is that we both know this'll probably work better. We can say good-bye as friends and continue our life as that and not as lovers separated.

The truth is I don't want to say good-bye.

I've been feeling tried, for a long time now. By everyone and everything, and its way exciting that its been this long of a run. Don't think what I know you're trying to make it. Thoughts I know plague your mind with ideas of me - looking for clues to the possibilities. Truth is not even I could explain it but I know what I'm doing.

Tackling the waves of problems we faced it was nice to be back up against the wall but knowing I at least had you to confide in. You were there for all of it and we were there for everything. This is more memorable I think than anything in my life. Somethings though don't last forever, and some feelings don't stay strong. This is when perseverance and tolerance or something should have stepped in, but at our young ages and our hearts full of ambition I think its best if we tackle everything head on, alone.

Used to be one of the rotten ones...

The idea was not something that I really understood, I would argue how the artists never really drew upon anything meaningful with their words and they never played any instruments that required real skills. I remember making point of the fact that they would incorporate other peoples music and create very basic breaks(chops of songs usually in 4/16 breaks). Hip Hop has grown to be something completely different now. It's instrumentals have increased in not only complexity but diversity, pulling inspiration from long lost indian records, to completely recreating a genre with old, dusty records from a time long gone(blunted in the bomb shelter -- Madlib). I think all the beatheads from L.A. are doing a great job at progressing the genre but more importantly to me, they opened my eyes to what they were doing.

It's not about the end product for us I'd say. It's the journey towards it, the end part is just a culmination of the ideas you had while listening to all those dusty old records. Anyone can lay down a drum loop and throw a cute sounding horn or a fancy piano piece. It's a little bit more difficult though to find an original sound, a style, to pull it all together with. I think a lot of that comes from what you grew up influencing you up to that point, I never chose a genre to love or stick too although I do have my preferences(and hip hop is not really one of those). I think the spirit of hip hop can be carried through all sorts of mediums, and hip hop embodies a more updated jazz feel. The ability to be free from any classical rules, while still applying the basics though: Harmony, melody, and structure(albeit any of these can be argued). My musical journey has taken me from punk, rock, classical, jazz, all kinds of world music and even for awhile indie pop but I do believe it's that knowledge that all these genres has bestowed on me that let's me create something original.

Records...are something I just love. My equipment can't really keep up with me anymore, but if I could I would still buy records everyday of the week. I pick up whatever looks interesting, and yes, I do judge a record by its cover (hah!). I remember at first being interested in records because of the collectible aspect when it comes to indie bands releasing limited press Vinyls but soon I purchased my first set of tables, a mixer....and I can only say that since that moment I have not been able to get rid of my itch. I enjoy the music as a hobby, not as a background noise to drown out the emptiness of a room, and this is the ultimate way to enjoy your music, by making it yours.

It echoed louder

than usual that night.

The moon poured through cracks in the blinds, even still the room was as dead as a mausoleum. From one side came the quiet pips of someone snoozing quietly, from the other wisps of music in the air. I was comfortable though, laying on my bed running through my memories, watching the highlight reels.

The headphones sang their songs and brought memory after memory. The darkness was my blanket, engulfing me in that comfort of anonymity, in that area where nothing was real and everything was only a faint memory of a time where almost nothing seemed real. The echoes of laughter rang through my ears, the sounds of children on some island in the middle of a vast sea enjoying life without hesitation. The lawn was washed out, too green to be real; and the sun washed everything white, a contrast to the darkness which I lay in, a floating sun burnt 70's polaroid hinting of a time when nothing mattered.

The neighborhood was small, uninteresting and run down. Boxes of the same looking little apartment were huddled together within the gates but at the west end of the complex, on the far corner sat a little piece of heaven within this purgatory. There, the door would open wide to a vast wide open green field, I remember you could comfortably fit 22 of the best football players you could find in little Garden Grove. At one end of the field giant trees lumbered over the whole complex, their gigantic arms stretching out past anything my little limbs could ever reach; and soft green grass till the opposite end.

One room held all the wisdom, experience, lies, and problems. Another held hope for the future, evolution and adaptation. And yet another helped pay the bills. The grand hall contained our souls, entrapped in the tube and glued to the chairs. Our galley, well food.

It feels good, to be so lost within oneself sometimes.

It's when the memories burn brighter than the sun that I can't help but want to go back to that place. When the audio of happiness stream from one side of my head to the other, echoing as it comes back, and back, and back, and back...

A surprise event

The new year came and went but I was too busy to notice.

Straddled down in the ICU fighting...fighting...fighting for what?

Life? What is it?

It's strange. While I lay in my bed with morphine pumping through my body I got scared for the first time in my life. I got scared about life.

I didn't get scared that I was going to lose my life that night, no never, i'm too much of a fighter to go out like that. I wasn't scared that I was going to never wake up but I was scared that had I not woken up, what would have been of my life?

What would people remember? That every time I inhaled some smoke that I could blow a ridiculous O? That I was phenomenal at Halo? I didn't know, I still don't. That night I could have disappeared off the face of the planet, and maybe that could have been my end.

It's funny, the kid who was all the questions and ponders, abstractly might I add, about life could have lost his life in some stupid event that was not even important. For the first time in my life I was scared that I would have ended up being nobody.

Nothing.

There already is enough Nothing and enough Nobodies in this universe, especially on this tiny dot in the middle of the infinite nothingness we know as Space.

But it was a good experience sitting on my death bed, IV's streaming out of my arms, monitor pads watching my heart; I learned that I can't just be NOBODY, and that my life right NOW is just that - nothing. I have nothing to look forward too, and nobody to help share it. I've never been the kind of person to want that routine life I've never been one to join the idiot box generation either, then why would I waste my time? Why would I waste the precious seconds I've been granted to experience and understand the most I can doing nothing and being no one?

Is it because I can't find my calling? Or because I can't find a place to be someone?

The truth is I don't know. I've accepted the fact that somethings I will never know, and that sometimes you don't need to know. Life can't wait for anyone and life sure as hell isn't going to land in front of me.

The following night I was left alone to recover and I thought about myself and those close to me. There's only one way I can be happy I realized, and I have to take action now because if I don't I might one day die as a nobody, who did nothing. And that scares me more than death itself.

Spider sense tingling!

There are plenty of times when you find out in your life that things are not what they seem. Many times one could plainly be sitting in his most comfortable armchair, sipping on some Cognac, while puffing away on the huge acorn pipe unknowingly aware as your read your paper that the wife whore you've been married too so long is actually in the back room with five of new yorks blackest, roughest natives.

Unfortunately for many, it's never that entertaining, or hilariously dramatic. For many it is actually a quick slap to the face. A snap of the fingers, a blink of the eye. Maybe even just a realization. I am telling you, although more subliminally, that my life has gone through such a great change.

Too many times have I sat upon my porcelain throne reading for hours sometimes about a little funny chemical reaction that we all know and LOVE to call it by its fabled name - Love. Simply put, that amazing feeling you get when you pee, smoke some weed, or see a sibling. Love is simply that, a chemical reaction that is impossible to gravitate from. It is human, and being human is allowing the flow of these chemicals. Whether it be sadness, happiness, or in our case love, you must feel it. You must kneel and feel stunned when you get hit by it.

That's my realization.

There are somethings that are human, and there are somethings that are imposed, whether it be by society or media(which I guess is sort of the same thing but not really). Being able to tell the difference and understand the fullness of the emotion is not giving in or anything of that sort it is simply just being.

Being, being, being.

That's all we are, beings. I think people forget that though.

-rod