ON HAPPINESS

my life is very good.  i am an extremely privileged human being.  i come from a family that does their best to understand and support me.  there is a woman who loves me.  i don't have any debilitative conditions or anything.  i've never had to worry about discrimination or prejudice.

i am earning less than minimum wage and receiving substandard health care, and my work environment isn't a picture of healthy human relationships, but i am securely employed and generally respected for my contributions.  additionally, the organization where i work has broadly positive implications for the individuals involved and the community-at-large.

i wake up most days stoked on being alive.

all of this compounds my feelings of sadness with feelings of guilt, like i am an ungrateful son.  i can best describe my state of mind as one of melancholy.

i lost a good friend for no reason at all - or reasons known only to him, in any case.  the world loses human beings every second for no good reasons.  god is quiet and guns are loud, and the fires burning the bodies of murdered women roar the loudest of all.  maybe this is why i lost a good friend.

POSITIVE HAPPENINGS

i picked up a coffee addiction in a weekend, then came down hard the next week.  i like this binge-and-purge caffeinated lifestyle.    i did a a three day tour on the same weekend with perpetual dusk at curtsy caverns, to every city that begins with "m": adison, ilwaukee, and inneapolis.  we met lots of really nice and genuine people and played three radically different and equally fun shows.

the next weekend, real live tigers, foot ox, and french quarter, all dear friends, rolled into town, and brought new friends with'em.

the weekend after that, i spent four days near a lake in rural wisconsin with corinne's family, in complete relaxation.  many cheese curds were had.

weekends were a  really good time of clearing brain space and a nice break from artists with too much ambition - with unhealthy thirsts for fame and recognition.    i wish i'd written about this while i was still on a high from the weekend.

NEGATIVE & QUASI-POLITICALLY-AESTHETICAL SPIEL

instead, you get somewhat more demoralized ramblings.

i hate how i feel tired a lot.  too tired to make new friends or write new songs or do anything constructive.

what i really miss most is the noise.  noise in a non-genre, non-volume specific context.  i miss being completely lost, all up in it.  taking a dive into an ocean of song and dance.  i miss how music can become everything and nothing in an instant - how everyone, and anyone, and all of us should make art in whatever way is possible, and how this makes art one of the most valuable and readily available things in the universe.    it is why making art can intrinsically be a radical statement against the capitalist, destructive culture we live in.

we are told that what is rare is valuable; we are told that what serves a defined purpose and achieves a tangible goal is valuable.  art achieves neither, and yet it is indispensable.

i hate that i'm writing about these things and not doing'em.    i hate how i never get around to writing all the letters i want to write.

i hate how big this city is, swallowing everything indiscriminately - how the city is always busy.

there's a delicate line between living in an unhealthy state of desire for the past and fondly remembering great things.  glazing over past insecurities and painting the days halcyon. i don't feel like i've crossed over into the unhealthy area, but sometimes i don't know.

hope that made some sense

ben