Solitude

I am tired of living with people. Even if it is the woman I love most, my mother, I cannot stand to live with other people. The next apartment I get will be a studio; a cave in which I can retreat from everyone and just enjoy silence with myself.

The silence comes from being an only child. The silence was there, so I decided to fill it with music. That was just how things came to be. And all of that isolation, all of that time alone in my bedroom - it really opened me up to the possibilities of becoming one with yourself, understanding yourself, and being confident in yourself.

For a person like me, it just does not seem fair. All I want is a spread of land about 20 acres. There is enough land in the world (in the county alone) to give to me. Why should I have to pay the government to squat on God's land? If they took the time to learn my intentions, they'd see that there is no harm aside from being completely independent from the grid, and they don't want that. The government, does NOT want that.

So what am I to do? Rise above it? Conform? In the worst way, I wish not to. I can get my solitude in the woods at any time, but I can't bring a laptop into the wilderness, 1) because there's no electricity, and 2) because it's a burning contradiction. I can take my laptop to the library, but even there I'll be tempted to peruse the classic literature of better days, and lose myself in that.

It's not about self-control; it's about me being suppressed of my freedom.

As a man of God, I should be able to choose my woods, excavate those woods, build a home, and grow my own food. It used to be so. Not anymore. Not in the 2000's.

I must have that cave; the cave where I can go and be by myself and still get my work done. The woods will always be there.

The Most Inspiring Quote In My Life at This Moment is..........

"I'd put my money on the sun and solar energy.
What a source of power!
I hope we don't have to wait to oil and coal run out,
before we tackle that."

- Thomas Edison (1847 - 1931)

Burning Branches: Forced into Forcing the Creative Spark

So I'm starting to write once a day on this blog as an exercise that is designed to make me want to continue writing; a kind of, warm-up routine of sorts. After all, my mind is typically on other things; things other than getting done what I need to get done.

Where does this feeling come from, anyway? The drudging of having to do something, AKA your job? You know there's money in it for you, yet still you would favor doing nothing at all and enjoying time at your leisure. Money is a necessity to you, but when times arise where good friends combine and the fridge holds the wine - where the sun shines and the summer is sweet, and where the concept of having no plans is the plan at hand - it can be hard to get your work done.

So why is this, would you say? Would you say this is a subconscious feeling, suggesting a suppression of freedom, of, existential freedom? The need to relax, and step out of your life and view it from afar?

I would say so.

This is not my big editoral on Why We Shouldn't Work...I am merely stating the facts here: human beings are human beings; no more, no less. Because of our intelligence, we've been keen to make up these preassumptions, accusations and assumptions about "what is, and what should never be". This is a concept, and should not be confused with how things really are.

So Jon, what are things really like?

Things are the opposite of how they should be. Gone are the days of tending our homes, on our own land, providing a service of which we choose, and doing what we damn well please.

Instead there is always an entity to go through which will decide if you're weathered and experienced enough to, on top of that, pay taxes on your land and food (of which we buy at the store) - instead we hobble through meager, fractured school systems that force most young adults to choose a major that they're naturally indecisive about persuing, creating an unambitious view that leave many with jobs they either hate, leave, or stand stuck with.

And as you grow older, you gradually accept it. You change your lifestyle, and you persue something else; something you'll presumably like.

Buy a spread with with some wood by the road,
Grass gets mowed when the grass gets mowed,
Just worry 'bout the veggies and the raw sugar cane,
And live off the Sun and Rain.

Ten to twenty-acre square, hidden by trees
No more conventional yardwork, please
I can grow some good food, and I've got proof,
PV Solar, and rainwater from my roof.

I just need to get started working, and then I'm good. It's not that I'm lazy, I just don't care.

You call This Music?

Upon turning your radio dial to the upmost mainstream station, you'll hear people like Lady Gaga, Mylie Cyrus, Drake, or even Kenny Chesney or Brad Paisley. What proceeds is a shredding of these artists:

Sure Lady Gaga does some wild things with fashion. But her voice is nothing special, she's not much of a dancer, and her piano playing is barely fundamental. So why does everyone love her? It's because of what she wears. This is a superficial society. It is a trick to distract you from the music.

Mylie Cyrus lucked out. Simple as that. And again, her voice is also cliche and nothing special. The songs are trash; embellished with pop guitar lines and digital harmonies, they are barely even considered creative.

Drake is just another rapper who built on the Juelz Santana style; a slow, drawn-out flow that respects the lyrics, but it's SOOO slow that it goes off beat. So you've got people in the crowd dancing either really slow with the beat, or in double-time basically hopping up and down like rabbits. There's no swing in this music. The auto-tune is just so disgusting.

As for Kenny Chesney, well...he may look like a cowboy, he may have that distinctive Nashville voice, and he may even sing about things that cowboys would sing about, but this guy is not a cowboy. Again, it's the image. Three-quarters of his fans are women who want to have sex with him. This worked for Def Leppard too, but at least they rocked the fuck out and had their own sound. This guy is just parody of his forefathers.

Brad Paisley is Kenny Chesney with guitar chops. Same voice, same image. Enough said.

So who ARE our musical kings and queens of today's music? As a lifelong musician, I can tell you that the Kings on top are people doing their own thing: Indie Bands. Kanye West and Jay-Z spend all their listening hours listening to these new Indie rock bands. Why? Because the hip-hop and club music is THAT BAD. They're musicians; so like me, they know good music. And what's on the radio as "pop" music is dead, horrible music.

The queens would be women who actually live and breathe music, and have something new to offer. The epitome of this woman is Alicia Keys. Enough of these club songs about love, enough of these synthesized beats. Either sample something old and funky, or get down with that old and funky sound again!

MUSIC IS DEAD. WHO WILL SAVE THE PURITY OF MUSIC?