chaserevel

[chaserevel]

“There’s a world behind the world we see that is the same world but more open, more transparent, without blocks … To touch this world no matter how briefly is a help in life.”

— Gary Snyder, from The Practice of the Wild: Essays (Farrar, Straus, and Giroux, 1990)

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“Upholding truth is my lifelong work. As elusive as the truth may be, it comes clear for a moment when I work deeply and honorably. I affirm my allegiance to the truth: whatever it is, however it shifts, and whatever discomfort I feel in not really comprehending it.”

— Eric Maisel, from Affirmations for Artists (G. P. Putnam’s Sons, 1996)

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People think that intimacy is about sex. But intimacy is about truth. When you realize you can tell someone your truth, when you can show yourself to them, when you stand in front of them and their response is “you’re safe with me” - that’s intimacy.

The Seven Husbands Of Evelyn Hugo

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If you’ve figured it out, you can give me up, spill my secrets, if you want to. It’s not like I don’t want to be free.

But I can do a lot more for all of us if they don’t know. So.

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And it occurs to me that I’ve been trying to make myself into a machine. Not that that’s a bad thing, but you know. Gotta remember to be human when that matters.

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God, fucking Christ I miss you.

Fucking hell. Why is talking to you like breathing fresh air?

Where are you? Cause I’m sitting here drunk, taking in a second hand smoke and all I can think is your name.

You wanna tell me why I care? Because I honestly can’t figure it out. Guess I’m just hopeless, huh.

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The more you think about your identity, the more complicated (and more potentially interesting) it becomes. (Or maybe I’m just a narcissist)

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I think the main thing I've learned this year is that sometimes, even if a need can not be resolved immediately, it is still worth (and I am capable of) fighting for it. 

The way I’ve been  phrasing it is that to have a ground up/discovery situation (which is generally the ideal situation for things,) you have to have ground. You have to establish what you need, you have to be prepared, so that you're not either worried about what you don't have or incapable of doing what you plan to do.

(To be honest, id say these get more interesting the deeper you go, but that’s not for me to decide.)

[chaserevel]

I don't even know how to explain the WONDERFUL things I've got going on in my head right now (I mean I do, but I'm expressing so shh.) 

I've just got--like, there's so much TO the universe, and everything. There's so much to be figured out, so much to be understood, so so so much potential, and I love it. I mean, yes, it's definitely a LOT. There's a TON of things to keep track of at any given time and generally that makes me pretty exhausted, but it's a good exhaustion, because I know that it's because I'm chasing something that A. could make me more capable and B. is just FUN to think about. 

I'm having a good time. 

Like I said, I am kinda tired, and I don't know exactly how I'm gonna put together all of this writing into something more easily understandable, but the fun part is figuring it out anyway, and that's kind of the step that I'm on. Honestly, I do think I could probably take this into actual science. Like, maybe I'm the musician that also wrote a law of physics or something. I don't know.

Either way, it just feels good to think about this. To know more and more, to seek, to chase knowledge (maybe that's what discipline does, reduces the positives you feel from chasing knowledge. that's terrible. that’s disgusting.) I've been hovering around emotion for awhile now.

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There's just something on the tip of my tongue that I feel is undone. 

Is this what it's like for normal people? To want to just space out and exist, observe, take in the world? I guess it's a good thing that I'm becoming more like that, means I'm being more discovery-oriented and enjoying and explorative. And I do think that that's a bit easier on your brain, too. Sometimes. 

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It's just like. I guess I'm a little overwhelmed (wrong word, but) with how good this is. How it's happening. I think when things are bad and you actually want to turn them around you've got to find the things you're being stubborn on that might just be causing your ruin. And then not be so stubborn on them. Also making lists of good things, trying new things, that's good shit. Just putting yourself in GU situations. 

So I guess I'm getting comfortable with letting the music be a thing in me. Giving him some control, lmao. That's a tHING! Remember though, I don't even have that control really in the long run, so letting go is the best way to get what I really want, I think. Letting go. 

Letting go. 

I feel like there's just one more thing I wanna say before I do, but I also think that maybe that's a myth I'm telling myself to keep control? If I had to say one thing, I guess it would be that, at some point, I'm gonna need to check back in on who I am, where I'm going, how I'm doing that, why I'm doing that. Remember me, re-indulge in discovery of myself. 

But that's an as-needed thing. 

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Also I think everything that’s ‘sinful’ is really just stimulating but that’s just me 

(just because I’m not ashamed of what I want doesn’t mean I’m not scared of rejection. I’m just getting better at ignoring it.)

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I just am anxious, but I know that's not a bad thing. I know that it's because I'm excited and also nervous because of the amount of times that I feel like I haven’t done my best. But that's alright. This is discovery. It's alright. Doing things even though your body is telling you that it's gonna kill you, right? 

Maybe that's why I like the resentful rocker thing so much. Because they have accepted that nothings gonna change everything. No one specific thing is gonna make their life worth living. Which, notably, is not the same thing as thinking 'I don't know if any specific thing is gonna change everything.' That's a ground up approach. But I mean, actually, maybe for the rockers I like, it IS that 'I don't know if any specific thing is gonna change anything, but I don't expect it too,’ whereas a real ground-up person would not have an expectation either way. 

Okay, cool, I can probably handle that. That's how we're a bit pessimistic but still able to be ground-up in a lot of situations, because even though we don't think it's gonna do anything, we can remind ourselves that it might, which leads us to action. 

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Music music music, music always in my head. 

Let’s pretend. Let’s just pretend, for just a second, that this is how I think. That I yell into darkness rather than light, that I can’t see the way the sound ripples through this wasteland of ideas, turning over every rusted scrap of metal and never-ending shred of dented plastic. 

What am I even looking for, here? Something new? Or have I just been wandering this graveyard so I don’t have to look at the rest of the world? 

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See, a lot of times you think you care about something just because other people tell you that you care about that? Other people imply or expect the reasons you’re doing something literally ALL THE TIME without even realizing, and so it’s like, if you’re just a person who genuinely doesn’t really care about that, you’re going to be trying to motivate yourself all wrong until you figure out what you’re ACTUALLY after.

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You ask me what to do, what to do.

You’re not gonna believe me anyway, so why would I tell you? I don’t want my words to fall on deaf ears, no, hear this instead.

The only place you can find yourself is outside of yourself. Don’t trust me. I’m not trying to tell you what to do, I’d never, you wouldn’t believe me.

I can’t tell you what to do, also, because even if you did believe me, who’s to say you would hear it right? My words mean one way to me, carry this meaning, this weight, whereas to you, they’re either new and light as air, or they’re crystal-clear definitions in a language I don’t understand.

You ask me what to do, what am I going to do?

I can’t tell you, you won’t hear me. We can’t speak like this, in words, there’s too many variables, too many unknowns, no. 

The only message that you will understand is what I can make you feel. Which is upon me, the communicator, the translator.

Let me be that, the mediator between you and yourself, the parts of you that cannot speak and the ones that are far too loud.

I don’t want you to trust me. Well. Maybe I do, but that’s a selfish want, if it is anything at all. 

No, I want you to use the tools I’m trying to give you. They will look different in your hands then they do in mine, glitch out and twist in the distance between us. But if I’ve done my job, they will still be tools. They will still have some purpose, no matter how significant or insignificant.

You ask me what to do, I can not tell you what to do, because I don’t know what you have to do. There is no answer that will work for both of us, only those that we happen to read the same way, but there is no way to know where those golden lines fall. 

No, don’t beg for answers, please don’t. Ask your questions, and then look at your hands. Feel your eyes in the back of your skull. Strike a match on that new thought, keep it, don’t let it burn out.

The best advice I have ever gotten is to never give up. I had to learn, though, that it is good advice not because it means you will always make it if you don’t give up. It is good advice because it means you will never stop moving, never stop trying, never stop hoping. And when you don’t have any fixed points, when you don’t have anything that other people can see and feel and you can point and say—that, that is mine forever—you need to never stop trying, never stop hoping because that movement is who you are. 

I’m telling you this because I am talking, constantly. I am constantly saying things, making things, spreading messages I don’t understand, because I can’t, because I’m not living in your head. 

And I can tell you that whatever I am saying, I completely believe in the honesty and truth of it, to myself, at that moment. But I cant always know what it means to you, and I can’t always know if I will believe it’s true.

And some might ask, then, why say anything at all?

Because when I speak about not giving up, I speak from years and years of experience. 

At this point, in this moment? Right now for me, but you aren’t seeing it as it’s being written.

Know that as this is being written the only thing I own is my own need to try. My own hope. My own movement. It’s all I really have.