A Series of Shorts on Worthlessness

Curb in tunnel 94/394

In the tunnel on 94 just south of 394, there are curbs before the walls. What are you protecting, WHO are you protecting. Is it for me, or for the walls? I’ve never seen anyone fixing you, but you look immaculate. I can’t tell, but I think you may be worthless.

Tow trucks

Your job is to steal my property, tell me that you stole it, and then sell it back to me. I don’t know how this is legal. Your existence is mostly that of pain and hatred. Does pulling a car from a ditch repent for your sins? Maybe you’re worthless too.

My reproductive self

My gender is like a lazy farmer. We just plant the seeds, then sit and watch. We do not water the garden, pull the weeds, or even own the land. We just wait and let someone else do it.

I’m not worthless, but I wish I could do more.

Racism

Even raised in a forward thinking, liberal home, I still find myself making assumptions about others based on what they look like, and it pisses me off. Maybe I’m mad because I don’t know who to blame, or because it makes me feel like an ass. Either way, I have to keep challenging my inherent beliefs, because they aren’t fair. Racism is worthless.

Ageism

Regardless of someone’s physical age, they all have something they know, something that hurts, a favorite pair of pants, a preferred shower temperature, a line of a song that gives them the chills. Whether someone looks 81 or 18 they matter. I want to stop judging others based on the depth of their wrinkles. Ageism is worthless.

Voting yes*

Amendments should be passed to give rights, not to strip them. Gay marriage is already illegal in our state, but people feel the need to stop the conversation. and it’s not just about getting different tax rates, or some on-paper way to be with someone… it’s about getting MARRIED; that final step of a relationship that is the first step of a life together. My best friend is the smartest and most talented person I know. He happens to be gay. I can’t imagine looking him in the eye and telling him, “I do not believe that you should be able to get married.” Not just because of how hurtful it would be to say that I don’t think he deserves a basic human right, but because I think he will be an amazing husband for someone someday. These civil rights will be granted. Maybe not tomorrow, or next year, but soon.

Voting yes on the marriage amendment is more than worthless, it is hateful.

*This is about the proposed amendment in Minnesota to define marriage as "between one man and one woman." I am happy to report that the amendment did not pass.

Learning by accident

On this roadtrip, I'm learning more than I anticipated.

Friends joked with me... saying I was "soul searching" or "finding myself" on this adventure.

"No, just seeing friends and family"


Turns out they were right. There is something different about talking philosophy with someone within their own home, staying for the night, and continuing in the morning. It isn't just the words either... you get this subtext of their humanity during the silences. Artwork, messiness, an old cat, a large CD collection... There are these clues to people hiding in the open.

I was riding the subway in Manhattan, and I sat amazed at the obvious: all of these people have lives. Each one of them woke up this morning, put on some clothes... where did they buy these clothes? Probably a different visit per article. Little stains tell stories, I can't hear the words, but the story is hanging in the air... a clickable button on the webpage of their wardrobe. Why is this man homeless? When did he start singing? This guy's backpack keeps ramming into me... why is it so full?

The Activist Commandments of the New Millennium

  (The following text was circulated anonymously as a techno-placa on the internet)

1.     Practice responsible hedonism. Revindicate the sacred right to party, and fight Puritanism in all its forms–it is a subtle form of political control.

2.     Avoid simplistic “us/them” binary oppositions. Things have gotten logarithmically more complex. The new conceptual models for understanding and explaining our times must be fluid, open-ended and multidimensional.

3.     Practice intelligent skepticism, o sea, question simplistic formulas, simple answers, one-sided narratives, dogmatic solutions, self-righteous positions. (Question everything, coño, even these commandments.)

4.     Distrust mainstream media. Go out of your way to remain informed. Subscribe to various alternative magazines. Read the foreign press as much as possible. Scan the net regularly. Get other points of view.

5.     Discuss politics and culture daily with friends and colleagues.

6.     Learn other languages, especially those that will help you understand and communicate with your surrounding “others.” We must all be fluent in at least three languages.

7.     Confront the oppressive and narrow-minded tendencies in your own ethnic- or gender-based communities with valor and generosity. The “enemy” is everywhere, even inside ourselves.

8.     Sit at the table with your true enemies (if you can, of course). Talk to them. Be polite but firm with them–it’s painful, but necessary.

9.     Fight self-marginality. Be an “outsider/insider,” a temporary member of multiple communities. We need to be everywhere: in the media, in academia, in the major institutions as well as in the community-based ones.

10.  Go high-tech; we have no other option. If you don’t participate in the net, and expropriate the new digital technologies for humanistic purposes, you will soon be out of the game.

P.S.: And one more thing­­– don’t make the mistake I am making in this text and take yourself too seriously. If you stop laughing, you are dead.

Gomez-Pena, Guillermo. "The Activist Commandments of the New Millennium." Dangerous Border Crossers: The Artist Talks Back. New York: Routledge, 2000. 77-78. Print.

A Rhyming Contest

A footnote in Byron’s Don Juan mentions a rhyming contest between John Sylvester and Ben Jonson:
“I, John Sylvester, lay with your sister.”
“I, Ben Jonson, lay with your wife.”
“That is not rhyme.”
“No, but it is true.”

(retrieved from futility closet)

Guess what?!

Hey everyone,

I decided to make a compilation of my work, and create a little book!

If anyone is interested in it, feel free to comment or @reply me on twitter (@danielnnz)

Love,
Daniel

My Life Story

My situation is FAR from unique… I soon leave for the next chapter, the next act, the sequel for which my publisher won’t have to ask. As such, I must wrap up the lines, crossing T’s and dotting I’s, before the spine will be glued and the kindle version synthesized. My life story does not begin with the where was I born and the who did I know, but the: what did I learn and why did it matter.

I find myself at a crossroads; street lamps absent. An invisible line extending ad infinitum to my left and my right, despite my brights and headlights, my foresight relays nothing. My shoe meets mud, I’ve equipped myself with a wind-up flashlight, the grinding charge winding whining a soundtrack to my twilight trudge. Over my shoulder I hear memories, interpretations, hyperinflations of past situations; memories, and memories of memories indistinguishable, extinguished with reminiscence and lack of replication.

My past and present memories flicker and fade from me; buy, sell, and trading facts and fiction for free.

Left arm forward I step, the perpendicular plane parallel to my palm, reading life lines and tragedies passing data to prophets and IDs. As I reach the boundary my fingerprints meet solid, like a mime I stand hand to an invisible wall, seemingly stationary. As I wait, I find it moves forward both quickly and slowly. The chronological wall moves logical to the accelerations and stalls of each moment. Weeks pass like days and days pass like weeks.

In America we consider looking behind us the past, and looking forward, the future. There’s a culture somewhere, I forget where exactly, that considers the future to be behind oneself, and the past to be within one’s gaze, since we can see the past clearly. The wall adopts the shroud of the future, my past and present preceding its motions.

Six years have passed since I last wrapped up classes and wore a cap and gown, I’ve found love, friends, I’ve worn out dreams, I’ve created sounds, I’ve driven for hours passing corn rows over dirt roads, dusty hubcaps emoting my silent excitement for novelty. My beliefs fluctuate, reliant on science waiting hours before the powers of gravity remind and mediate my existential opinion. Sex, drugs, Bach and Beethoven, my experiences lay open, every page accessible, some dog-eared in ALL CAPS and others small-fonted and barely legible. Just ask, and I can read you a page.

So, I’ve attempted and feigned adulthood for half a decade… what have I learned?

1. You train others how to treat you (and vice versa)

2. Life is Balance-

Everything in life follows a sin wave, of a sort. The stock market, freedom, weight gain and loss, productivity – the NEED to grow inspires our greatest growth; achieving our goals often begins the downward slope of negligence.

And on that note:

3. Shit happens, and it’s a damn good thing it does.

The greatest growth I have made as a human being has commenced subsequent to or concurrent with painful situations. Moments of fuckery, tumultuous relationships, major academic rerouting- Do you think it hurts when a caterpillar becomes a butterfly? Metamorphosis happens to all of us, the cocoon is intangible. Life experience forms the chrysalis in which we become future-us… we never emerge, we are a constant insect trifecta– caterpillar, chrysalis, and butterfly all at once.

4. How you treat your body affects EVERYTHING.

From mood, to sex, to how likely you are to get an A on a test… what you put in your body, how much you sleep, how much you exercise, and how much you take the reins and have control over keeping these balanced– this will strongly dictate many facets of your being. I’ve gotten to the point that, if I’m feeling badly, I run through the list: Do I have a legitimate reason to feel this way? If not, what have I been eating? Have I been working out? Sleeping? It’s not perfect, but it explains a lot.

5. For many women, chocolate is more than just a sweet: it’s a solution.

6. Besides being in a loud environment, there is no good reason to raise your voice

If you’re trying to communicate how you feel, and want someone else to respond well… There is a very small chance saying it loudly will defend your argument. As soon as you lose your cool, YOU are now the biggest obstacle between your point and mutual understanding.

7. Never take anything personally.  

Never. Take. Anything. Personally.

It’s hard.

You can never know where people are coming from. It is naïve to think that your interpretation of the sights, smells, sounds, and valences of your surroundings is the ONLY way and/or the RIGHT way to see things. Whatever someone expresses, whether it is love, pain, disgust... It is the trickle of life experience through the filter of their current state. If someone tells me I’m an idiot, I’m ugly, and I won’t go anywhere with my life… That’s fine. To them, at that moment, it is true, and that’s totally okay. It is human to feel hurt about things outside of our control, but human does not mean smart or logical. We can choose to evolve our reactions, involving understanding as the catalyst in the interpretation.

8. There are three types of criticism:

The kind you agree with,

The kind you disagree with,

and the kind you don’t want to agree with.

Lastly:

9. It’s all going to work out.

I don’t believe in destiny, I don’t believe in things happening for a reason. However, just as life is balance, and shit happens, we are BUILT to ADAPT. No matter how hard things get–You are going to figure out a way to make it work. In my undergraduate, I got denied from the music composition program TWICE… and went into music therapy. Now, I’m off to an internship, conducting research, writing for national blogs and presenting at conferences… and guess what? I’ve been FAR more successful as a composer since I’ve left the program. I actually thanked the head of the composition program for denying my access to the professional sequence.

No matter how bad things get, there’s a pretty good chance you’re not going to throw your hands up and go, “Well, fuck it” and just curl up and wait til you die.

Hands up against the wall, I try and look through it’s invisible cracks, attempting a sneak peak at my future. Static predictions lay like pictures, graffiti always changing, paint flaking where journeys have ended, and aerosol cans laying where plans are in the making. I sit with my back against the wall, my life covering the expanse between myself and the horizon. I’m equally nervous and excited for each inch the wall moves, slowly laying me down as it inches and flies forward.

Religion

Religion is regarded by the common people as true, by the wise as false, and by the rulers as useful –Edward Gibbon

The Next Day

There are few things more poetic to me than the collective recall of a novel prior event. A gaggle of folks placing puzzle pieces of the previous evening, laughing with the pictures being formed, the holes left behind, the pieces I hide in my pocket, embarrassed at the data it provides. MY forms of this experience border the mundane, a vain LCD beer-goggle memory of flamboyant dancing, perhaps a smooch, free-flow rhymes of internal overclarity.

Catching the eye of a co-party goer, my pelvic preaching reaching for the brakes braces for impact passing competition, reducing the partition from attracting atoms, protons and pro-contraceptives, deceptive cadence, rhythmic steps towards a mutual goal. With blurry eye contact I contact her equally hazy eye contacts I impact my intact ego ergo I go gogo grass romping and floor stomping hashtag #YOLO. Self esteem repleted, cell phone number deleted, day by day proceeded unimpeded no repetition needed. I played it  professional, let the night get locked into internal scrap books and unspoken eye glances remembering the night previous.

When I see films of the fantastic, I brainstorm how protaganists woke up the next morning, how they looked at one another, how they felt a week later. Our ability to consciously and unconsciously gold pan the silt and stone of our experiences post-hoc float on the boat of our rules and regulations, our judgments of the situations past present future – and future intoxicated. I heard once that we are the only animals that get punished more than once for failure, because we can be embarrassed by it later.

Let your judgments devolve, consider their efficacy, the biological advantageosity, ask yourself if your actions would have helped your survival, or hinder it; let the good and bad be not good and bad but incurred better survival or taught you for the future. Don’t stew on negativity, simmer on success and boil and improvement. Strain the pain of your gambits and games, let the colander hold the pasta (pronounced like New Englander) accomplishments and let the scalding water of embarrassment pass through to the garbage disposal. Let your dreams steam, brainstorms cracking lightning, create and ameliorate flow what you know and let yourself be great, let/ go of your imbalances at the graffiti covered overpasses/ don’t wait  /greet the /semi/ at the inner yellow dotted middle of the interstate/ play chicken with hitchens which ends whichever way that you create. Choose your evolution, be your own rebel, and revolve. Revolve around and judge your own actions, be a mirror, a camera, a blog posting stranger, endanger your assumptions and be the popcorn peeking brief glimpses of your projected love story, comedy, drama, and documentary. Be not the protagonist, be the screenwriter, the director, the guy who clicks the marker at the beginning of each scene.

            I love the reruns, the backward swirl behind a boulder eddy letting wetbeds revisit the steady amidst the rush. We do, we review, we learn. We question, we answer, we question the answers, we ask for input, we discuss, we say it out loud, we say it in thought, we don’t say it at all. We have the gift of the instant replay, the memories, the memories of memories that may or may not even be true anymore.

I don’t just want to learn from my memories; I want to revel in making them.

"How did your education prepare you for the future?"

My music school graduation convocation speaker contest has the prompt "how did your education prepare you for the future?" My friend wanted to know what I would write, and was encouraging me to do so for the actual contest... so she whipped out a camera and asked me to just talk about it.

It's basically just me talking about my experience in school, and what I learned from it.

I’ve never been able to see the future, but I can hear the sounds

 *note: This poem received a regional music therapy scholarship!

Ten years ago I did not know that music and therapy could be joined at the hip to help tip the scales in favor of an individual that may stand residual;

Those that the bare bombardment of previous attempts at care had left behind.

I did not know that the beat beat beat of a metronomic clock or tick or bang or blip entrain the brain and train a man to walk again or teach a kid to say her name or

help an old couple of sixty five years step and sway with a grin as they waltz the first time since dementia set in.

5 years ago I entered university to study music theory and composition, not knowing of the existence of a fourth floor entity that would eventually house me in a profession yet unbeknownst to the then unknown me. My trials and tribulations were the ACME rocket skates and catapults flying my body after the imperceptible future self,

road running down the train tunnel of my

sort of mental, sentimental, illegitimate entitlement. I am not a cartoon. I stopped the shenanigans, setting in plans and locomotion to force open the clock face, stick my hand in and replace the smallest hand embracing that I control how fast,

that I’m not yet late, but I need to paddle harder if I don’t want to be in last.

1 year ago ago I still didn’t know what to do with my life.

6 months ago I found myself solving complications directed through filters of goals and objectives. I’ve gone from believing anything

to  “What are your sources?”

From ‘music is magic’

to “neural structures enact and react, dynamic not static, idiosyncratic periodicity a rainbow through the prism of cortical restructuring and neural Darwinism.”

3 months ago I knew enough to help my family.

Now: My internship is lined up, my textbooks almost back on my shelf, the process of college finally high fiving me with a step to the next adventure.

I walk dorian through the door/ again, to my left, lit in Lydian fluorescence, my past debacles crackle under the weight of what I learned from their existence, mixed in a mixolydian fixation on reexamination of my options. MT BC 2B simply gives me a vessel to practice my passions of people and using the music to make endless ends meet. Not just making music in order to be at the aid of another, not just creating music to restitch the fabric of an individual, but making music through making lives better, pitches and rhythms emanating from the mere mending of the textile. I have before me the opportunity to spend my life using music to help others, and helping others to make music. How could I possibly turn that down?

Major, minor, flat nine, sharp eleven…

I’ve never been able to see my future, but I can hear the sounds.

I’ve never been able to see the future, but I can hear the sounds

Music Therapy Scholarship Submission

It takes a village

Many persons know the story of the swallow which had entangled its claw, by some means, in a piece of thread fastened to a spout on the wall of the Collége des Quatre Nations, at Paris. Its strength being exhausted, the bird hung at the end of the thread, which it kept raising in the endeavours to fly, uttering plaintive cries. All the swallows from between the Pont des Tuileries and Pont Neuf, and perhaps still further, gathered together, to the number of some hundreds, all uttering cries of pity and alarm. After some hesitation and a tumultuous conference, one of them seemed to have found a means of delivering their unfortunate companion, and no doubt communicated it to the others. They placed themselves in order, and each coming in turn, struck the thread with the beak, somewhat after the fashion of ’tilting at the ring.’ These thrusts, aimed at the same point, succeeded each other every moment, and greatly incommoded the poor captive; but in a short time the thread was severed, and the poor bird set at liberty! The flock remained till night, chattering all the time; but in a tone which had nothing of inquietude, and was expressive only of mutual congratulation.

– Ernest Menault, The Intelligence of Animals, 1869

retrieved from: http://www.futilitycloset.com/2012/03/15/it-takes-a-village/

i am alive.

Life. I love being alive. Of all the trillions of sperm and billions of eggs available during the time of any conception, the eventual interdependent amalgamation is statistically infinitesimally improbable. Following fertilization we still struggle making it unscathed towards the light of existence.

But here we are.

We were the sperm with the strongest tails, the highest-octane mitochochondria; the egg whose fallopian flight best descended to the integral location for a genetic chest bump.

Regardless of your religious options, adoption, upbringing in thinking or plowing fields with oxen I rate this the greatest knowledge that led me to the edge of existential appreciation.

The opportunity to be conscious, to feel with our fingertips the grits of sand crashing and passing the crests of our fingerprints, to have a skin color and bodily imperfections; the opportunity of opinion to have a favorite anything, to type a poem in a periodic sonic environment of on-beat clocks ticking off-beat with one another. It is simply miraculous that we get to breathe. There is probably a better chance of winning the lottery every day of your life than being alive in the first place.

I don’t know if it’s possible to NOT exist… But isn’t it cool that we …do?

Do I need another awful Girlfriend?

Like photographs we develop from the negatives, snapshots of moments project opportunities for maturation to sub the subconscious for the conscious process of contemplation, rumination on the who, why, and how.

I know my growth was most evident following time spans prevalent with flavors of pain. Of course, one cannot see the galaxy of one’s experience from the vantage point of the sun, one must travel the space-time continuum to absorb the curriculum provided by the orbiting dramas of your satellite discomforts.

These eras of pain-induced education often correlated with an obvious situation we have all experienced… dating. I refuse to assume that I have had worse relationships than the average man woman or child, but the few extended liaisons I have endured have grated my patience and confidence, frayed threads peeled from an emotional string cheese, and left me in a timid vacuum from which I greeted growth in self control and maturity in order to confidently escape.

Please understand that I am thankful for those times… regardless of the argumentative or sexual buying and selling that led the Dow industrial to rapid recessions. Put differently: the superfluous negative qualities of the high density (low quantity) quandaries of my long term relationships greatly accelerated my growth into my present self.

As I was running in a cold wind back home, I was considering my current state of being. It has been almost two years since my last lasting love connection, parallel rivers and streams of infatuation, sex, and abhorrence running into a nearly dry tributary of patience, and I feel my personal progress has become lethargic, flowing slowly without fuel from stress and compromise; my lack of coital instigation stagnating to stagger my stag bachelor behavior.

Then I realized an obvious solution to my educational deceleration: I need another awful girlfriend;

another traumatic relationship to help me reach the next level of potential. I need a renewed disappointment for the transition from “It’s so funny when she…” to “OMG I hate it when she…” I need an impetus to drop all of my friends and disappear for a few months, only calling when my partner is busy or angry. I need a bedmate about whom I will complain incessantly, until someone suggests I end things, after which I will only sing praises of her awesome-nity. My growth like an oak from being choked up fortnightly, for realizing I rightly assessed a problem with honesty. My hurt would not be wasted; the vast benefits of practicing communication and/or co-inhabitation with a complete bitch and/or idiot would not only make me a better future partner, but a stronger human being!

This is obviously not the ONLY way to achieve personal growth… but it is definitely one of the most efficient ways to really learn about one’s true needs, and what one is actually willing to put into a relationship.

So, if any of you have a friend who would be awful for me, hook us up.

Why lie? Act I

I figure there are two and a half major types of lying:

Type #1: Lying for the sake of the LIAR

Type #2: Lying for the sake of the INDIVIDUAL TO WHOM THE LIE IS TOLD

Type #2.5 Lying for the sake of a NON-PRESENT INDIVIDUAL

Now, there is a big umbrella with these categories:
It seems to me that most people think they are lying for the sake of another individual. How many of these people are really lying for the sake of his or herself?

The perfect example is the act of cheating on a partner. In this situation, the cheater often has the pressure of possibly ending what may be a desired relationship through telling the truth. I have discussed this issue with a small sample of transgressors; cheaters often express that they are doing their partner a favor by lying about their unfaithfulness. The cheater believes that they are type #2 lying; they are lying to not cause distress and pain to their partner. I believe* that in most situations these individuals are in actuality 'type #1 lying' by not admitting their exploit, and 'type #2' lying to their OWN SELF to believe that this is not in actuality a predominantly self-centered act. They are lying to avoid the pain of hurting the feelings of their partner, the guilt of their act, the possibility of 'breaking up', the possible loss of a best friend and/or sexual partner, etc. They are lying because it is EASIER to bear coping with the possibility of internal guilt for a single act than to weather with the consequences of the actions being known.

I tend to be fairly black and white when it comes to honesty. I do not believe in lying, and I do not do it without great reason (generally, the responsibility for someone outside of myself). However, I have not been able to logically understand why I feel this way.

Why does truth matter? There are countless situations in which not knowing the truth would save great distress. We have ideas of it being inherently "right" to be truthful, or that we "owe" it to others to be honest. However, confusingly, none of these strike me as being fully legitimate reasons. I cannot logically explain why I should be so polar on my feelings on lying.

In the earlier example, the cheater could possibly feel a level of self-sacrifice for bearing the guilt of their act and not telling their partner the truth. I cannot truly justify this as being wrong. I absolutely disagree with the sentiment, but I cannot explain why.

As a personal example, I once had a partner tell me, "If I ever got pregnant, I would just get an abortion and not tell you; I don't think you could handle it." This clearly sparked a discussion. But, was she right? In my opinion, absolutely not.

I know maxims are cliche, but I fully believe in the concept that "we are like photographs: we develop from the negatives." By lying to avoid and/or appease pain we are not only perpetrating a moral offense through the act, but we are enacting the greater misdeed of stifling the growth of each involved individual. Through dishonesty, we are stealing opportunities to increase the potential and capacity of experience.

There are many arguments at this point about which I do not have time to write. However, I just want to point out this is my personal philosophy, and I fully recognize that it may be mine alone. I do not believe that I am "more moral" or a "better person" for these personal rules. I find that understanding one's 'moral guidelines' is kind of like being vegan: by having specific rules it allows one to feel a greater level of independence and control.

*I am always open to the possibility of being swayed to another opinion, or simply changing my mind. My use of "blanket" or "black and white" statements should be read as "based on my experience thus far I choose to believe xyz until I discover or am convinced of otherwise"

Cars

Cars must be so lonely, they never get to touch one another. When they do, it's called an accident.

If they ever wanted to hug, or kiss, people would get upset and file insurance claims.

I don't think I could survive, being a car.

Impulse buy

I don't need you. I don't think about you. But... you're in front of me, on sale, and all of a sudden you are a necessity. I put you in my shopping cart, walking towards check out, trying to convince myself whether or not I actually REALLY need you. I decide to take one more lap around the store before I pay for my items. I remove self control and put it back on the original shelf, I drop a few shallow ego boosts into the "child seat" section of the cart. I get to the check out shelf, and glance at the magazine covers and articles that are solely there for the folks who impulsively decide they need gum, or batteries, or want to pay non-subscription price for magazines about soap opera, the Kardashians, or new sex positions your boyfriend will love!

I throw a 3-pack of mint gum on the conveyor belt along with everything else, and go home.