hearts, stagnation, beauty & photographs

myspace cannot possibly be a healthy affair. our misguided ideas of
friendship, which really amount to some non-existent degree of
popularity that we've created in this e-world. on principal i'm
entirely against this whole thing. and i'm a god damn hypocrite. i
know. someone recently equated myspace to being something like
the end of a year in high school when everyone goes around
soliciting people to sign their yearbook. "sign my yearbook... sign
my yearbook." and we all know, of course, that your value as a
human being is based upon 1. how many people sign your yearbook
and 2. how endeared to you they are, judging on how many
gratuitously complimentary things they write ("oh my god, B.F.F"
" you are the hottest girl i've ever known!" "the cheerleading team
would have been nothing without you this year. you are soooooo
amazing." etc). now, as young adults, we realize the perversion of
this immature insecurity, but shit, we've just re-created it, in a more
colorful, technologically advanced way.

but it is fun... isn't it?

the burning desire, necessity, of proving something is the beauty of
myspace. the collegegirls can prove how hot and sexually desirable
they can look in their push up bras and over exposed shots taken in
bathroom mirrors (hey, i've done it too.. i know), the bands can feel
validated as real bands once they have more "fans" on their profile
than they've ever had show up at a show, the budding writers can
post their deepest works for the world to see and comment on, the
high school kids can just continue the year book signings, etc, etc.

and i'm as guilty as all of the above, cause i'm here too. i'm
participating. but i still am against it in principle.... so....i would like
to come clean and let you all know that while i've accumulated some
ridiculous number of friends on myspace, in real life, i'm mostly
anti-social, sometimes reclusive, and have only a few close friends,
whom are the very finest of hearts and souls. i feel like myspace is
cheating in representing it's inhabitants, its internet trollers, its
patriots. because on myspace we present the very best versions of
ourselves. the version where we can highlight all of our
accomplishments and virtues and supreme taste in books/music/film,
but we never display the mountains of ignorance in other areas, or our
bad habits, or nasty personality quirks. we present the version of
ourselves who's photographs do not show the flaws of nature,
disproportionate facial features, or that extra ten pounds. if myspace
is anything, it's an attempt to exhibit the version of ourself we would
really like to be. so, in an effort to escape this cycle of the trickery we
allow beauty and to try and exhibit the version of myself i'd like to
be...... these are photos from my day. i am not in any of them. but
they should show you more of me than any glossed, dolled up photo
of my mug ever will. it is beyond skin and body.

converting the heart's intrinsic knowledge to that of human form (words,
photographs, songs, all in between) comes easier to some, than to most. and
while i'd like to think my little body was built for making songs, some days i
can't even bring myself to try. some days i can see nothing but beauty in clouds
and strangers busily scurrying by me in the street. and this is so overwhelming i
know of no sound that could touch it. some days the love in my belly is so
overwhelming i just have to lay in bed, indulging in this beauty that holds no
form to vision. some days i get caught in a sound, incapable of understanding
anything outside of the sound.

there is beauty, and the proper way to execute it for every day, for every mood,
every love, every hurt. they come, for me, as sound, sight, and words. in that order.
the sound being the most frequent.

so today i laid upon my couch most of the day. i felt bad about this, i tried to
parent myself: "self, you have work to do, get your ass off the couch. you have
phone calls to make and errands to run, and songs to work on. get to work."
but my body wouldn't move, my soft little heart just laughed, and kept me laying
there, to fully discover the place that today had brought to me. it was an
important day in self renovations, and i understand that now, as i am again,
laying on my couch. small dog radiating and curled below my knee, and a swollen
heart deep in my chest that is happy. happy to be here. comfortable with this
feeling of pure floatation and no prospect of gravity to bring me back down
anytime soon.

today there was no music. instead i took pictures of things as I lay paralyzed in
the beauty that is beyond our merely aesthetic forms, the beauty that is represented
in 3d, by the culmination of the entire heart of some collective universe, and here they
are for you.