a random whine mid-week...

so on my travels back into the world of blogging, i've been checking on some of the people that inspired me to do this in the first place. i found an incredible line on *6ize: "Do you have that disease… that sickness?—the one where you need, you desire, to discover something new, something that lifts you up above the muck for a moment or two. I’ve had it for years—although the yearning is no longer as strong as it was when I was eighteen. No, I am not referring to drugs, but it is a chemical reaction, some strange union between mind and body when you listen to music that touches you." as i read it, i realized that this is me, i have this illness and i've had it for that long, and, no, it is not as strong as it used to be, but it is still there... residing somewhere beneath the piles of manila folders on my desk, beneath the failed attempts at budgeting my money and not having anything left to buy new, or even old, music, the reason that i started this thing... to explore, find, and share music. i would disagree slightly in that i don't consider it a sickness, more like a privilege...some people just don't care, and that is more disturbing to me than anything else. yet, somehow...it all gets lost, somewhere between trying to stay in shape, eat healthily, and the inevitable reality shows that i get embarassingly sucked into. i want to post everyday and find all of the coolest and hippest music, i just can't...but i really want to...can't. it's not a lack of desire or knowledge, just a complete lack of energy and, dare i say it, motivation. i want to be able to hang with the "indier than thou" crowd, but i never will. do i surrender to this, do i shut down and commute to my office...forever? i guess this also applies to the other things that i used to care about a lot more than i do now...politics, issues, the power of debate, and the intoxicating energy of people doing "something". the idealistic answer is to quit my job, sell my tv, and do whatever it is that i need to do. however, the realist in me kicks in and i get a lecture from Jiminy Cricket about fiscal responsibility and the debts that i have already incurred trying to live a life between claims adjuster and rock star...that and i refuse to miss an episode of The West Wing, it's kind of like being politically engaged and entertained at the same time...and thank god the writing is beginning to get better, i was worried for a little while...this is a subject for another post... the last concert i went to was on 11/10/04 and featured Minus the Bear, Signal to Noise(can't find anything), and The Detachment Kit....and it was awesome. the next morning, i felt like shit, getting up to go to work and wanting to be on the road with the bands....sigh. the concert before that was...i don't even know...maybe Hey Mercedes or possibly Iron Maiden. i used to go to at least 1 or 2 concerts per week in high school and most of college...and i bought more CD's than that. i need to do something more, somehow incorporate more stuff into my life...maybe moving will help, i don't know. there is one thing that has stuck with me though...based on my love for Elliott, i picked up the album Persepctive by By The Grace of God... made up of some members of the afore-mentioned band that i like. at the beginning of the song "Boy and the River", there is a female voice speaking and this is the end of what she says: "...we only ask that a small peice of your heart be Zapatista, that it never sell out, that it never surrender, that it resist. that you continue in your places and in your means, to struggle forever so that dignity not poverty be the harvest in all the corners of our nation." this, i feel, i can do. i will hold onto that one piece of me that has always felt a little bit revolutionary, that has never seemed to belong with the rest of me, that always seems to scream a little louder at concerts and equally during the long cold commutes. i will do what i can, where i can, when i can, and however i can. i hope that this is what they were asking of me, it's not much but hopefully one day it will be more. part of that will be to try to share independent music and combat "corporate rock" as best i can with this blog....it won't be to the extent that others do but i will give what i can of my energy. humorous sidenote: it turns out that i suck at finding mp3's on the web, how do the other guys do it? i know that this has gone all over the place and has sounded probably equally didactic and simplistic at the same time. i will end this by saying that i love the fact that i have the freedom to express myself on this thing and that you also have the choice to stop reading if you want. i also love my wife who is a career woman working 50 hours a week and is singing along with By The Grace of God, i'm pretty sure my dog likes it, too...although he did eat the tortillas that we were going to use for dinner. it is now bedtime....repeat ad nauseam. some mp3's: The Detachment Kit - Ted the Electric The Detachment Kit - Skyscrapers Bright Eyes feat. Neva Dinova - I'll Be Your Friend Last Days of April - I'm Calm Now