Ramblings

Some days you just have nothing to say and today is one of them. There's a bunch of stuff happening but none if it wants to make me express myself or share an opinion. Instead I just want to digest it for a while and see what thoughts will come. Sometimes thoughts will form, other times things will just drift off into the ether never to be seen again. Other times they will come back around when you are least expecting them.

Forgot to remember until I remembered I'd forgot

Sometimes I forget what I have learnt. I've been reminded by this since I received a HD Camera for Xmas and started to mess around it in the apartment. All the 3 years at University learning how to shoot video, frame shots up, to zoom and pan smoothly came back as an instinct not as a thought process. It wasn't until the end of me doing something did I realise that I had knowledge in how to use a camera and how to shoot clips.

Then today I downloaded a basic editing programme and soon found myself submerged back into the worlds of transitions, laying down a soundtrack and creating titles. I looked up from my computer and an hour had passed without me realising. I had become absorbed in the work and at the end of had a rough clip that I am going to turn into a larger project.

Now I have no illusion that I am the next Scorsese or even the next Youtube fad but the satisfaction in using a skill that you forgot you had is rewarding and good for my sense of self. Who knows what else I forgotten to remember or haven't even learnt yet but it helps to keep the world interesting and promising.

World of Words

The need to write something comes out of the need to express something. Words are something that are easy to use as they swirl around the universe every day. How often do we use them without realising the implications. How many of them do we utter only to have disappear into our sub conscience to emerge out of a cloud some day when we are least expecting them.

Writing down letters in a common pattern gives words increased power, as we are forced to think about their meaning and their purpose. At once they lend themselves to deeper thoughts and implied ideas. People have conversations with each other and what one person omits as an unnecessary detail can be the crux of the discussion to the other person. It is so easy to forget how others see us us or hear us until we are forced to put words on a page, these words are potentially going to be read by others and thus as a writer you immediately begin the internal debate of what they truly mean and whether anyone really cares.

Ultimately you have to break through these walls and write for the words alone, for it is with the words that you can create new worlds and these new worlds will lead to new words and eventually a story, an idea will take shape. Breaking the chains of being self conscious is an important and hard step, one I am yet to master but am striving for.

Hope trumps Apathy thanks to Edwards

Is is just me that felt a bolt of hope surge through me on the news that Edwards is endorsing Obama. For the last month all the campaign rhetoric has been sounding stale and unoriginal. My interest was waning, my fear was that the Democrats were going to destroy one another before the Republicans even get a chance. Now with one foul swoop Edwards has stepped in and put life back in the campaign.

Edwards' speech about breaking down the walls around DC is what people want here. the average person realizes that the don't have a voice in Washington, yet they are the ones suffering from the policies of the government. Obama offers a voice that is not weighed down by a long history from working within the federal system. He has worked in the system, he knows how it operates and thus can change it.

Who knows what will happen between now and November but I can say that I for one feel invigorated by today's events. Part of me was giving up and apathy was setting in, the campaign was just turning into the usual rhetoric and bickering but now the apathy has been locked away and hope is romping around the room. Hopefully there's enough people feeling like me out in this vast country so that we can all make a difference and bring about some changes.

Stumbling on Inspiration

I've been struggling to rework a short story of mine, I knew what I had to change and how I wanted to change but the words were stuck in my head and would not come out on to paper. I tried a couple of different methods and managed to piece together some stuff but overall was feeling a tad frustrated. So I let it breathe for a while.

Today I switched on the TV today to stumble across Jonathon Demme's Documentary Neil Young Heart of Gold. I like a lot of what Neil Young has done from his Buffalo Springfield days to CSNY to most of his solo output. I remember hearing a couple of tracks off the album that is the main focus of this doco and thinking it sounded good but never buying it for whatever reason. As I was watching I opened up my laptop and pulled up the story because watching the film made me want to create. I can't do it with musical notes but I can use words. It was like the film and music had flipped a switch in my mind and the words started to come. This initial rush is so satisfying and from there I was able to work out some kinks in the tale and get some stuff down that I'd been wrestling with inside my head.

Now it's not quite done yet but it's getting there and that's what important. It's so easy to forget that writing is a craft like anything else when you grew up reading Kerouac and how whatever went on to the page was what should stay on it. It's taken me years to go past this myth and realize that like anything in life you have to work hard at it and slowly it will come together.

Scatterbrain

Trawling around You Tube and found some Fishbone reference. I liked them int he early nineties and watching the videos back now realised they were all shot in NYC, at the time I owuld have no idea. Then listening to them reminded me of another band who I couldn't remember the name of. They had a novelty hit in Australia around '91 but for the life of me couldn't remember the song or band just what the front cover of the LP (yes I owned it on vinyl) looked like.

So off I went to Allmusic.com and looked up similar metal/funk/rap hybrid bands from that period and there they were listed as similar artists - Scatterbrain and the song "don;t Call Me a Dude". Of course it is on You Tube and the version is off of Rage, the music video programme on the ABC that I most probably saw them on. The song is till as funny as shit and the music rocks, though does sound straight out of 1991. Though you can hear the influence of Devil goes down to Georgia at the start.

The video itself is a classic as well. Check it out...

http://youtube.com/watch?v=sEr8SYqTc3s

Nostalgia tripping on You Tube, way too easy to do....

Busting the Cherry

I'm diving into the blogosphere after a half hearted attempt a few years back on another host. That one failed horribly and lays shriveled up in a shadowy corner of the interbeline. Hopefully I apply myself to this one like Duaner Sanchez did to his injury rehab in the off season.
Yep I'm a big Mets fan. so much so that I went into work 3 hours early just to watch the first spring training game (Mets failed to win but Santana's change up is as beautiful as a beer in the afternoon sun of Seville) on Friday.
But no this is not going to be just a baseball blog or any specific type of blog. Just random crap that filters through my mind and out of my fingers, Joyce I am not.
So the cherry is busted, well kind of, maybe I need to some kind of techie to get my blog virginity reinstated...