I enjoy the background on this thing.

Not a huge fan of the formatting anymore, the rest of the style lacks some utility that would be helpful.

I got a lot of garbage out of my head, here.

It's a fascinating dive into a person I haven't been for a very long time.

Maybe I never was that person. It's always been hard to tell.

What's there to update?

I have sleep apnea. Odds are good it has been the source of my most severe depression symptoms.

I've had two surgeries to try and alleviate it. Both helped the physical issues, but it seems my brain is determined to just...not breathe, sometimes, at night.

There's a machine for that, so I sleep with a vader mask now. Cool, huh?

Only it's difficult to keep at it, so I lapse a lot.

The way things are looking, the remainder of my depression symptoms probably stemmed from untreated ADHD - or, more concisely put, inattentive-type ADD.

Who'd've fucking thought.

I still am not sure I believe it, but the meds help in ways anti-depressants never did.

I still linger far too often on memories that are painful to hold.
I still haven't graduated college, though I'm actually making real progress for the first time in longer than I want to consider.
I have a pretty stable group of friends, and I'm doing my best to open up to them. That's one hell of a trip. Old me wouldn't dare.
I've accepted my role in a certain kink, and that has led to some really fantastic things. But that's not suitable for this blog, so we're leaving it at that.

Mom hasn't been able to walk since her knee replacement. It was supposed to alleviate the pain.
That was five years ago, maybe six? I have been trying to find time or money to remodel the house to compensate for her walker/wheelchair...maybe it's time to swallow my pride and start a gofundme. It kills me to watch.

I have serious relationships, somehow, and I'm not wasting away terrified they'll spontaneously abandon me. Again, old me wouldn't dare.

Which is not to say I don't have my issues. I'm here again, aren't I? Musing into the void?

Part of me hopes somebody will read it, part of me dreads that. There are so many of my friends who were left by the wayside because I didn't know how to hold on to them when I needed.

I rediscovered my livejournal, thanks to the efforts of some very strangely motivated hackers. Password breach on myspace and livejournal? What year is it, right?

That was bittersweet, let me tell you. I used to wax poetic about some asinine shit.
But there are so many reminders of those I've lost. Kat, Megan, Whitney, Sara...their pages are still there, like unwitting gravestones strewn across the digital world. The bits left are random, and it lends the whole thing a kind of macabre humor. Not the funny sort, mind you, but there's something to be said about the way the words of the dead linger online in unexpected ways.

I've moved to doing all of my "blogging" via twitter, nowadays. Scattering my thoughts into the uncaring winds of the internet in a more piecemeal fashion. It seems safer than meandering through the dusty, forgotten, crumbling pathways of my own memories like this.

CrTrainwreck, if anybody gives a shit. Hell, -I- forgot this thing was still around.

I've been cleaning and organizing my stuff in a meaningful way, for once in my life. That's another trip down memory lane, in different ways. I had two lives for a really long time, it turns out.
I still do, in a way. It doesn't feel as disjointed, though. I don't feel like delving into honest words is disingenuous anymore. I don't question my own motivations. I have my secrets, like anyone, and that's okay.

I have, for lack of better phrasing, come to terms with who I am.

I have not, however, figured out what the fuck I want to do about it.

Hello again.

-C

Welp, this thing still exists.

...nothing to say, just surprised. What's up, folks?

Religious Content Alert

Something

This post is designed to go with the Walk Off the Earth (Gianni and Sarah) cover of Say Something. If you want to read and listen (which I'd recommend) the link is here: http://youtu.be/fqVNm0c8nnQ

The expression isn't perfect. It can't be.
But I'm trying anyway, damn it.

Reflection

Where do you find motivation after confronted with the stark reality that everything you are, everything you are capable of, is not enough?

That question first weighed on my mind some years ago. I was just getting in to high school. I wasn't ready for it. Hell, I'm still not ready for it. I don't have an answer. I don't even know where to start.

If I had known, then, that this question would haunt me and break me down into this abject and barely functional...thing, I'd have burned it out of my brain just like so many other things.

I think I can safely identify it as part of the root of the problem, at least. That's nice.

But in all seriousness, that is the worst part about being intuitive or intelligent or whatever the fuck you call me. I could have played music for a living, or became a doctor, or gone into biochemical research, or started a business. The research is the strong option right now.

Thing is, staring variability like that in the face, most people default to what they enjoy most. Following your dreams, or what have you.
My curse is that they are all weighted the same. No option appeals more or less than the other.

Once I accepted that, ages past, I realized that was a component of understanding that nothing I did would ever feel like it was good enough. I could be an amazing doctor, and lament the musical career I never had. Or vice versa, etc ad nauseum.

It hurt. It hurt a lot. I shrugged it off and played the game day by day, but it all lead me to here, and all I have left is the sum of my failures.

Some of these things, I realize, it isn't rational to blame myself for...I should not be carrying all of the guilt that I do. Knowing it isn't rational, though, that doesn't tend to help much.

Insanity is portrayed as more glamorous, and that statement alone makes me hate the world.

Genius and insanity have that close-knit relationship and everyone loves to talk about it and not quite outright claim they believe themselves in the first category, but while everyone is willing to look at the heights of achievement one can reach...no.
No one ever, ever talks about the anguish and suffering. We're all about overcoming adversity. Truth is, those beautiful achievements do very little to soothe the misery. How would I know?
Intuition.

I do mean misery. I don't notice it as a significant factor anymore because it's been my resting pulse for nearly a decade, but I am relentlessly unhappy.

Most of that is predictable, if you have all the variables.
You don't, and I am not going to give them to you.

I used to have this notion that I could overcome all of this for love.
That was quaint and pretty and so very terribly wrong, and I'd give a lot to take back the attempt because it still fucking hurts to have failed so utterly - myself, sure, but mostly the truth of hurting another in the process of my downward spiral.

There's blame number one. Or is it? See, it's hard to tell. Do I blame myself for her feeling the need to leave?

Yes.
Same way I blame myself in no small part for the deaths of all my friends who had diseases that maybe maybe in some tiny fantasized version of reality I could cure.

I told you it wasn't rational.

I've been doing the isolation thing again lately. I didn't realize it until I considered how long it's been since I had an honest conversation with another soul. Go figure.

So it all boils down to that question. Motivation. I want to do something, but what? How do I choose and deal with leaving everything else unfulfilled? I can't have everything. I can't even have most of it. Probably not even some.

But nothing, nothing is getting old. I am tired of being goddamn tired all the time, and my mind is stagnating. I can't help but worry about the onset of rot.

I don't know precisely what to do about it, aside from seeing that for the moment, my only real option is to open myself up to all the guilt and shame and ache. There's a reasonable chance it'll spark something inside of me.

Or I'll drown in it.

But change is good, right?

Funny notion, that.
Some caterpillars endure metamorphosis and become butterflies.
Others get eaten.

- C

"You think you are safe? It is an illusion."

Just watched a video that presented the two-party political system in the United States in the same light as an NFL game. Two teams bent on dominating, not even just winning, but creating a dynasty...with the real motivation and power being the money involved in the product being sold - the conflict. Most spectators are at best only tangentially aware of the background machinations involved in sports.

The video presented the situation as analogous to the Democratic and Republican parties. The spectators (voters) remain unaware of the background motives, while the "teams" play out a bitter war for dominance, and the owners of the teams do nothing but profit on the often complacent viewership while essentially having coffee together in the "real" world.

In the NFL, the illusion is created at some expense. But it's entertainment.
In politics, there's collateral. Real human beings suffering and dying while our attention is diverted to...what, exactly? Garbage attacks about the citizenship of a presidential candidate?

I find the analogy presented both immensely depressing and mind-numbingly accurate. If nothing else, it sums up the word that came to mind about the State of the Union address. Misdirection.

Brings me back to an earlier thought about the nature of services. If you aren't paying for them, you are probably the product being sold. Apply that line to politicians and tell me it doesn't smack of accuracy, if buried beneath a little bit of cognitive dissonance.

- C

Once in awhile I get these flashes of clarity.

It's like between them I'm living, breathing, thinking, existing in a haze. Nothing is distinct, everything is muted, but that's my reality so I don't notice it.

Then the moment comes and the fog clears and I see everything in my own mind the way it is supposed to be. I see the momentum I could have, the drive, the honesty and kindness and sense of purpose.

I hate those moments. I wish like hell it looked like a mountain I'd have to climb or some challenge or even something painful that I'd have to suffer through. Those I could handle. I don't have a high enough sense of self-worth to be that concerned about suffering.

Instead, it looks foreign. I recognize there is a distance between where I spend most of my time and these moments of lucidity. I can even see a path from here to there, but it's through a medium I don't recognize. It's like seeing a glimmer of hope at the end of the proverbial tunnel, only to find the air has become water and the ground quicksand. I don't understand how to travel in this medium, and so I can't move. I can only watch.

It's probably just another way my mind has found to torture itself for all the things I haven't done. I don't mind the suffering - not because I'm noble or strong, but selfish. Pain without purpose is indistinct like everything else, but pain from a clear source that perhaps I deserve, that can sometimes be sharp enough to pierce the veil of...all of this.

You don't know what that's like, and if you do I'm sorry.

Steps to a Happy Thanksgiving

I'm doing one of those list posts things. I don't like picking numbers, though, so it's "a few" steps to help improve the quality of your Thanksgiving experience.

Musical Moments #14

Not a concert summary? Oh man, I've actually gotta say something.

Today's rant:

"Mainstream" has got to be the single most useless attempt at a derogatory I've ever seen.
And I see it a lot. Everywhere. It's an excuse for people to hate bands, even hate -genres- of music.

But let's break it down, because mainstream has been applied to everything conceivable.
I've heard (in recent memory) Shinedown being called mainstream, In This Moment being called mainstream, Three Days Grace, Adele, Daughtry, Dream Theater (seriously?), and a whole host of others.
You know what they have in common? They play music. That's pretty much the sum of it.

Which means mainstream isn't in itself a genre, but rather a status. A status of being well-liked.
Which means in using the term as a derogatory, you are suggesting to me that you hate a band because other people like them.

Wait, what? Take your hipster trash elsewhere.

Isn't that what everyone wants for the music they enjoy? For it to be enjoyed by others?
Isn't that the whole point? To appreciate beauty?

I'll accept a laundry list of reasons not to like certain groups. Hell, just saying "I don't like them." is sufficient. I realize that taste is primarily - and if nothing else - subjective.

But refusing to give a band or an artist any credit because they are, at the absolute minimum, good at their jobs, is a sort of lunacy I can't really get behind.

I'm not saying there aren't "mainstream" bands that I don't like, mind you. But I don't like them because of their music, not their popularity. I thought - hoped - we'd get past garbage logic like that after graduating high school.

Disappointing to be wrong on that one.

Come on, people.

- C

I don't think I've really had a good grasp on what it means to have a clouded heart until now.
It isn't the recognition that you can't have what you want - that's base, simple, black and white...just wistfulness. A paralytic. Useless.
It's more the dawning of understanding that what you want might only exist inside your mind. Might not exist even there.

It never feels like burning too hot, but it amounts to that. Not in velocity, nor even in raw energy...just in intensity. Hues over-saturated, tones building into a cacophony, an intensity that makes even the barest glancing -real- touch a sensation so profound it borders on painful. Beautiful agony.

It's a quick lesson that the world frowns upon that. No one will outright say it. Ambition is celebrated like the fundamental vices of greed and hunger and lust and selflessness. But the pursuit of simplicity - not reductive, not in lieu of accepting reality, but in tandem with it - is misunderstood as...unrealistic expectation.

People want their flickering lights and shadows. Not sunlight and darkness, those are too direct. Too honest, perhaps, if only in what they reveal. They want their walls and segments of reality and reductions and illusory logic. They want to absorb their truths in palatable and perceptible pieces, and to share themselves only as much as the risk seems justified by the reward.

What they want is not my fantastical reality. It is not what I want.
What I have may not even be what I want, as most often anymore I just want to feel connection.

Communication is a means to an end, even elevated into an art form...it channels and narrows an otherwise unbearable insight into a bite-size piece that can be presented in prose or poetry or pretty little ditty or parody.

Ultimately it is a tool to reveal these truths, but they shy away from that even if you open the doors for them. Pull back the blinds and let the unspoken seep in like so much gorgeous starlight, and they only slink into the corners of the mind and ask you to cover their eyes. To go away. Leave me alone.

Alone is a thing people say without comprehension, a word too big for the conception adopted in collective consciousness. Alone is a fundamental fear. We sometimes desire to be separate in physical space, in mental space, but the average expression slanders the innate need to feel connected. Not even in those dark moments, but especially in the light ones.

What I want is to reveal your truths. Not just lay them bare but touch them and connect them to mine, in the pitiful and fleeting hope that where words have always failed a singular moment can occur where you see what I see without a lens. Without perceptual bias and mental filters and reductive reasoning and wasting words on whimsical exposition.

I want to bask in that moment and show you what spatial and temporal relativity means to the depths of the spirit. Perhaps so a piece of yourself, cut off and starved to death on a diet of lies and misleading facts, can remember what it felt like when a soul touched yours. Before your mind cracked under the strain of perceiving, before walls, before words, before thought.

I use the word want because I can exist without seeing the want fulfilled again. But I've felt it before, and want, as all words, falls short. I want it like you want water and oxygen and to believe that you are real. Do you want to believe that as much as I do? More?

I say this having learned that you are faceless and nameless and maybe a device invented by my own mind to restore a hope I strangled so I could survive. I say this for the sake of saying it, not suffering from the delusion that it matters only in the reading and understanding of it.

Truth is a form of art, a form of beauty, and like the two it requires no particular justification to exist. It is, as you and I are, as everything is, was, isn't, won't be.

Perhaps can't be.

As much as I've come to accept that my particular desires are eccentric and border on egotistical and hint at insane, as much as I feel like my reality is not the same one everyone else inhabits, I still wrestle with why I should want to bother trying to show you - whoever, anyone - something so precious.

Someone should have done it for me.

Seeing it alone isn't just a meaningless non-event, but a vacuum that inhales and consumes the meaning in everything until it all suffocates and withers away.
Seeing it and sharing it only to have it summarily rejected or misunderstood or run away from yet again is a failure, an unacceptable outcome whether the norm or not...a suffering complete to the degree that pain is preferable.

The probabilities are not favorable, and the options amount to satisfaction or irredeemable insanity.

It's all predicated on the premise that you are listening, really listening.
I'm not even clear anymore on whether or not you - the soft you, lurking beneath other identities and craving, maybe, what I crave - are even real.

It's altogether clouded. I'm altogether clouded.

Let's face it. You aren't going to save me.
You - real or imaginary - are too busy being afraid of yourself just the way I was afraid of myself and terrified of the possibility of you.

Unlike wistfulness, fear makes an excellent motivator.
If your walls are what mine were, if no one yet dared reach inside...or worse, if they did without understanding what it meant?
I thought my damage was irreparable.

I've yet to be convinced otherwise, but I'm starting to entertain the notion. You, my dearest fairy tale, have not likely had a reason to do the same.

If you're real, if I find you, if I break down those walls and somehow you don't find yourself out of love and into loathing...if, if, if.

If is hope.
Hope is the catalyst for joy, or for torturous suffering, I haven't yet decided which it prefers.

For now, luckily?
Expression is my catharsis.
I wonder, what is yours?

- C

9/10ths

In another dangerous moment, I had some more thoughts.

Musical Moments #13

Date: September 8, 2013
Venue: The Zoo Amphitheater, OKC
Lineup: We As Human
              In This Moment
              Papa Roach
              Skillet
              Shinedown

Fire Away

I had a thought, earlier, which is always dangerous.
But it's a thing I'd like to discuss.

September 1st, 2013

Nobody reads these things.
In this case I prefer it. I don't like the spectacle.
I don't like the platitudes and the quotations and the half-baked sentiments.
Maybe that makes me a cynic. I've just never found it comforting, grieving like that.

Something I said earlier on Facebook. I don't often like things that I say, but I think this one bears repetition. Plus the blog makes it way easier to keep track.

______________________________________________________________________________

I get a certain feeling when I look at work by Van Gogh or listen to work by Beethoven or Chopin. It's difficult to describe, because it isn't something we often see anymore.
Hell, it's not something we often see historically either. It's why they hold such value.

Anyone can take beauty and make something beautiful. Anyone can take misery and create something tragic, sometimes even tragically beautiful. It takes something far and away beyond that to take raw suffering and darkness and force from it something unimaginably breathtaking.

It's often overlooked, but it takes a belief - a faith, even - that what you are creating is more important than you are. I say that because such an act will consume you to the very core...that's the nature of the beast, isn't it?
But the result is a thing unique, a thing that by itself makes the world brighter for anyone equipped to perceive it.

The word, which falls short, is triumph. In that moment of perception you share simultaneously the knowledge of whichever creator's darkness and the reality of their victory over it.
And in that moment your own darkness becomes lesser for having been exposed to the truth of that perception.

I don't care if you get the same feeling from Beethoven and Van Gogh or from Lady Gaga and Andy Warhol or if you are driven to create your own work to feel it. While I'd argue that certain elements make it easier to find, the medium is irrelevant. Find your truth and cling to it and don't ever, ever let anyone take it from you.

Musical Moments #12

Suppose I ought to dust this thing off a bit, maybe.

I'm going to preface this by giving a shout out to Rock 100.5 The KATT - without their ticket contest, I wouldn't have made it to this show at all. Winning sure does feel good, for a change.

Moving on...

The Date: April 4, 2013
The Venue: The Diamond Ballroom

The Line-up:
Candlelight Red
Lacuna Coil
Coal Chamber
Sevendust

Candlelight Red wasn't bad for an opener. I didn't find any of their music super compelling, but that's not to say it isn't good. I wasn't familiar with them going in, and I don't find myself aching to learn more after coming out. But I'm not you, so don't take my word for it.
As for stage presence, I got the "new band" vibe from them pretty strongly...too much attempting to amp up the crowd without quite enough energy to back it up.

That said, the mosh pit and crowd surfing had started by the time Lacuna Coil took the stage.


I'm not going to pretend that these little excerpts are actually unbiased - I have a penchant for girls who can rock any form of musical instrument (that includes the voice, for those keeping tabs.)
Thus you might imagine that I would do dirty, dirty thing with Cristina Scabbia, given the opportunity. You would not be wrong.

I've seen Lacuna Coil before, and I confess to preferring them at smaller venues. I don't really know why...something about their stage presence just seriously shines when you can see them clearly, I guess.
This set drew pretty heavily from Dark Adrenaline, and I was perfectly happy with that. If you haven't given Lacuna Coil a listen in awhile, you're missing out. Their sound has done nothing but evolve and improve as time has passed, as far as I'm concerned.


Coal Chamber coming out of retirement...
You know, I'm not sure if time had softened my memory of them or what, but I was -not- ready for the level of energy they brought to the venue. In a phrase? Holy. Shit.
I was near the front for their set, and I've got the bruises to prove it. I seriously did not remember Coal Chamber being that -aggressively- metal. But they have certainly not lost their touch.

Coal Chamber says to the nonbelievers? "Don't Fuck With Me."
(If you don't know the reference, go listen to some damn Coal Chamber.)


Sevendust.
I've seen them before, at Edgefest in Little Rock. They surprised me then - having not seen them before, I wasn't prepared to headbang so damn hard.
Well, this time I was prepared. They introduced their new album during this show - Black Out the Sun - and it kicks some serious ass. That basically sums up their set - kicked some serious ass. I was pleased to see the Ballroom as crowded as it was by that point, especially for a metal show.

Closing thoughts: go listen to some good headbanging music. If you can't think of any, try Coal Chamber or Sevendust. If you love female-fronted metal/rock groups, dig in to some Lacuna Coil.

And don't forget to support live music, whether it's your cup of tea or not.

More to this later

I find myself in one of those odd moods where anything I say feels like talking too much.
Partly because truth is too much to say, sometimes.
Partly because the lyrics could ruin the melody.

It makes me wish you could hear things the way I do.
Then there'd be no need for the lyrics. You could see the words the melody is already saying.
There'd be just truth, simple and raw and exposed.

But that would be too easy, wouldn't it?

The Curse (Save Me)

Curse of what? Being a nice guy?
Couldn't tell you.

I'm undecided as to whether I'd even call myself that anymore.
I think too often people use "nice guy" to mean "not a jackass."
That isn't fair. Some people put a lot of work (and twice as much restraint) into being kind.
There's also plenty of value to it. Nice guys don't always finish last, contrary to the idiom.

Musical Moments #11

The lineup: the Trans-Siberian Orchestra
The venue: Chesapeake Energy Arena, OKC.

I've been a pretty avid fan of the TSO for a long time now.
I'll freely admit to being pleased that they decided to roll out a "new" show this year. I highlight new because the album it is based on has been around awhile...they've just not played the story based on said album.

For those of you who haven't or won't be seeing them this year, that album is "The Lost Christmas Eve."
I'll warn you right now, it is -much- darker than their previous story, and certainly not for everyone.

That said, I like it more. I prefer the music from it and the story has always gotten to me more than "Christmas Eve and Other Stories." Which is not to say I don't enjoy the hell out of CEaOS...so I understand if this show isn't your cup of tea.

Highlights? Well, if you haven't seen the Trans-Siberian Orchestra, you should know this:
It's worth the money just for the story/drama.
It's worth the money just for the light show/pyrotechnics.
It's worth the money just for the music.

Getting all three is a lot like a Christmas present. ;)

Along those lines, the first half of the show is a Christmas story sort of thing. Some may argue about the religious subtexts of it - frankly I don't give a shit. The story is good and the storytelling is spectacular. If you buy tickets to a Christmas concert and get pissy about religious subtexts, the issue is not with the show - and that's all I'll say about that.

The second half is a good old rock concert with all the fixins. Ridiculous riffs, stupendous solos, and lots and lots of laser lights.

I'm comfortable with this sort of concert as a tradition, a show to be relied upon to appear around the same time of year, every year - regardless of whether the band members change/move on/etc.

As for my favorite songs, you ask?
Christmas Nights in Blue
The Lost Christmas Eve
What is Christmas
etc
etc

I would really be able to give a more thorough review of this group if I had the chance to see one of their spring shows...less of a quota of Christmasyness to be met.
With that in mind, much as I loathe commercialized holidays, I confess to being put in a Christmas sort of mood by their shows. You might find yourself saying the same.

- C

Musical Moments #10

Alright, it's my customary week-late concert review.
This time, we're talking about 100.5 the Katt's annual "Wreck the Halls" show for 2012.

The lineup: Aranda, Ten Years, Chevelle.
The venue: The Diamond Ballroom, OKC.

I'm going to start off by frankly saying any of these bands could headline their own show and I'd be happy. That makes for a potentially pretty awesome show.

...and it was.

The venue sold out, which will make this the second show in a row I've seen there that sold out. Good work on that. Again, they had us park in the back, which annoys me...but it wasn't as bad without the rain and mud from the last Ballroom fiasco. They at least had the courtesy to throw down enough gravel to make the back lot drive-able. 

Aranda opened - and good for them. I'm rather pleased that this local act is getting recognized for the talented group they are. They set a nice energy level for the whole show and played a very full set. I prefer 3-band lineups for precisely that reason...gives everyone more of a chance to produce a well-rounded set.
 I confess to being a little disappointed that they didn't play "The Rest of My Life," but I'll live. "Whyyawannabringmedown" stole the show, as far as solos are concerned. It's hard to compete with Das Boot. (If you see them, you'll understand.)

Ten Years followed. I forgot how much of their music I enjoy...I suspect they suffer from being rather underrated in general. Seeing them live, I forget why that might be.
They've got a great presence, and a really good grip on that "dirty" rock sound - a sound I enjoy rather thoroughly. "Wasteland" was, in a word, bad-ass...especially in a full house.

Chevelle.
First thing's first: Dat Bass. I'm sure it was a combination of the bassist and the sound tech, but the bass was satisfyingly ridiculous from start to finish of their set. Good solid vibration all the way through the air - and the body of the listener. I suppose I'm going to have to invest in good quality ear plugs before I start going deaf in a less temporary sense.
Chevelle played one hell of a set, and the energy level never really dropped. It was hot - literally - but no one seemed to care. I can't really pick out any highlight songs, because that would imply that some were less well-placed in the set than others.
I'll say this much, though - having fancy rugs on the stage (yes, I know, rugs are practical too) looked very classy. A double-encore was also very classy.

All in all this is one of the best concerts I've been to see this year. Maybe the best, who knows.

Year isn't over yet, after all. ;)

- C

(P.S. - My concert-going compatriot's massive level of excitement for this show totally made the concert even better. Just saying.)
(P.P.S. - The pictures are a bonus. I am not a photographer, and make no apologies for the quality. These things get taken with my phone camera, that's all. If you want real concert pictures, find a concert photographer like Sydney Frames.)