maybe (just) maybe

maybe

(just)
maybe

she
looks
better
in
overalls
than a dress;

be a u
t i f ul
no ne
th e
l e s s

Innter turmoil and the struggles of mind

An open mic night at Gallagher's Cafe in Port Moody, BC

Maybe it’s my own hang-up, but I haven’t played a live show for half a year. The buzzing world of a musician appears to constantly take the form of a life forever on the go. And maybe that scares me.

There’s a critic with my voice that lives in my head and he constantly reminds me how doubtful he is that I can make a career out of this thing called music. He lobbies evidence that my best moments are always in my bedroom, unrecorded and raw. And when I sit down to put pen to paper and write lines to a song, he so sourly grins as I forget just what I sang.

This world craves the musician who can stand boldly and authentically, delivering the gratification to those in sorrow. Or maybe it’s all in my head. But when I think about it on a day like today, the time away from the stage just seems to grow. A passion for playing music and singing from my heart seems to be overshadowed by the upkeep of daily practice. A fire that once sustained me, at times, now has me working to sustain it.

My vision of a “successful” artist is so warped. I sit down with a feeling that I want to translate into chords and then suddenly I’m contemplating having to deal with fame. No one who understands fame wishes it upon themself. And so I put my future on hold for another ten minutes, distracting myself with video games.

Inner turmoil has a funny way of manifesting. A loss of focus, absenteeism, an out-of-character outburst…all of these are simply cries for help. And I’m not really that twisted inside. I can sit in one spot and meditate; I come to class; I don’t even punch my pillow anymore. But sometimes, especially in winter, there is this apathy that I like to imagine is death’s silent hand in the balance of life. A moment of freefall over the crest of a hill in a car, about to hit ground. An animal at its end, accepts fate’s nudge.

There is a wish I have, to rise from my shell and slip away from my crumpled body; fly into the dark wintry night. Free from the burdens of flesh, the necessities and troubles of life. And into the cold, sit forever in the snow counting the stars.

moonlight ball

Moonlight Ball (click to enlarge)

This is another MSPaint painting that I drew today. It’s called “moonlight ball” and it’s a picture of two animals, a wolf and a swan. Like any painting or drawing, it started with a line. A shape. And then it evolved into what you see before you. I don’t know if I’d say that it’s a complete painting, but I’m satisfied enough to share it with you. Unfortunately I can only post JPEG’s to the internet (unless someone knows a way to post BMP’s or other hi-res files?) so if you want the real thing, just send me an email at isaaclouie [at] gmail (dot) com. I guess that is the state of our technology, like how you hear the record music of a waltz through the static and “noise” maybe in the future this will be our nostalgic “JPEG phonograph.” So even art, though blurred and distorted on the internet, can still affect feeling and emotion.

What do you see? What do you notice?

A Free and Random Chaos

A Masaru Emoto water crystal.

We’ve just had Daylight Savings Time and I’m thinking about just that (time) as I watch “Through the Wormhole with Morgan Freeman.” I love Morgan Freeman and I want to be him and do what he does: embody curiosity and wonder – for both are what make us young, wise, and humble. Ponder this: a clock does not change time, but measures it. We may use a clock to help us understand time but only by how we notice the clock changing over time. But we can also rely on our sense of timing and time by the way we feel the difference of things: the passage of subtle, slow-moving yet powerful micro/macro-scopic change. We feel the moments no less than the minutes. Maybe all we feel are the moments…and the minutes are simply a collection of rain drops to say it has rained 3,805,118,976,114,123,446 drops in this moment, but say nothing of the 5 million flowers bloomed. Time is our sense of order in a free and random chaos that is life in the universe. Our higher order thought amidst the lower order playing field. And our game of fun is to forget we know any better.