Matt Searles: Mystic Prophet Philosopher Artist

On the future of recorded music and the music business

Matt — Tue, 09 Feb 2010 18:10:11 +0000

What follows is my reaction to a post by David Kusek entitled Searching for Salvation on the subject of the future of recorded music, and the problems the music industry faces today. He’s running a contest for new business models.. I wrote this in the comment section of his blog, and realized I should probably post it on my blog to.. cause I have this crazy habit of writing comments like this.

I don’t know entirely if I agree that recorded music is dead.. I think what’s dead is the old business models. I also think there’s a lot gong on in the evolution of the kind of technological ecology.. of like.. how people find new music, filters, financing, and whatever.. that needs to happen.. and once it does, the picture will shift a bit more.

I remember many years ago.. social media.. particularly bloggers and podcasters.. there was this whole conversation about “how do we monetize this stuff” and while its still an issue for many, a lot of people have kind of worked it out.. I think the issue for recorded music might be the same kind of deal.

A lot of it seems sorta obvious to me.. “a band” is a brand.. the brand must make some sorta product or service.. you must be able to make more money then it costs to operate.. you must work on building your brand, and making great products and services.

I’m not sure about the specialization.. well, maybe I’m not arguing.. but I think musicians, producers, engineers, label folks.. have to rethink what there specialization is.. I think they key is being open to a lot of experimentation.. try lots of stuff and measure your success.. see what works, or works in what way, what doesn’t.. drop what doesn’t, do more of what works.. but keep experimenting.

I think music has to be made for cheap, unless its a loss leader for some other area where you make more.

In any event there’s a kind of 101 of what I think you need to do that I don’t see being done well.

The design of artist’s websites is a good example.. the thinking through of what the business objectives ought to be for those websites.. I think a Flash branding experience is great, but that’s no excuse to forget about the rest of the strategic concerns or not have something that works on iPhone’s when people are out and about and are thinking they might want to go to a show and can’t see if you’re playing wherever cause your Flash site doesn’t employ progressive enhancement… and it doesn’t help if it doesn’t have the SEO so no one can find you.. and you might have wanted to think about those sales funnels.. and your news letter stuff ought to have other ability to do fine grained segmentation and get stats on what was opened and what wasn’t.. so you can fine tune that..

What I think is obvious is that any artist needs to build a team around him.. you need people who understand the online channels.. the social media blah blah blah.. as well as traditional media publicity and marketing and whatever.. you need people who understand the music business.. etc

The reality is that promotion on the internet can be cheap, as can the production of music..

Innovation comes from synthesizing disparate stuff.. so I think a couple things.. #1 It maybe that business models.. what works for one person might not work for the next.. You really need to triangulate your passions, skills, and the market.. to work out where you need to be. #2 You need to look out side of the music business for idea about business models.. take from whatever, synthesize whatever.. You just can’t expect the off the shelf ideas to work.

A lot of stuff needs to be rethought.. and I think the music industry’s resistance to change is a big part of the problem, but that it is one of the industries suffering the most.. when we get through this.. we maybe ahead of everyone else.

Finally, we are living in revolutionary times.. and there are incredible opportunities to be made and found.. but you kinda need to think like a revolutionary to make that work.

Sick again

Matt — Fri, 08 Jan 2010 20:29:43 +0000

I seem to have this bad habbit of getting really sick for about a week or so every few months.. so.. if I’m not responding or interacting with you.. or you wonder what’s up with me, now you know.

Whatever it is, if I move my body in the wrong way it hurts.. this and I’m out of it, my mind isn’t really working right… I haven’t tried to really focus on anything for a bit.. but.. I don’t know

Latter:

I had to get up today to make sure I was there for the meals on wheels people. This is a long story.. its for my dad, and if no one is there when they come, the protocol is that they call the police and the police do a “wellness check” on my dad… so it took a lot of me to be up for that.. and then it was time to leave the house, and try and get something to eat.. which ended up being a painful ordeal.. just going out of the house to get in the car takes a good deal out of me…

As of now I’ve been up for sometime.. I’m sitting in front of my computer.. I’ve been screwing around with trying to make music.. I figure it probably doesn’t take too much to sit at my computer.. but every time I have to get up, be it for the bathroom, to get something to drink, to find tissues, whatever.. takes a lot out.. and my ability to focus is impaired..

Music to get you in that Christmas Spirit

Matt — Fri, 25 Dec 2009 22:41:42 +0000

I must confess, it doesn’t feel much like Christmas around here.. 2 years ago this month my mom died, I’m now taking care of my dad.. who has alzhiemer’s… I’ve been pretty tuned out of mass media lately.. so none of the usual Christmas messages have reached me.. I feel like I should be with family, but no one has invited us.. so its all just rather hard.

But then I started searching youtube for Christmas music, and my move improved.. its funny how.. even when you feel so out side of this world.. not connected to.. whatever Christmas is supposed to be.. somehow there’s still magic in the day…

Bet Middler on Acid (as Cheesy as they want to be)

And just cause we can’t get enough….

Just cause…

Every Body Loves Charlie Brown

King Diamond, you can’t beat this!!! (This one is SOOO my favorite!!! Just warms my black heart!!!)

A little Motorhead?

How about a little old fashion Iron Maiden?

And our old friend Rob Halford

Yeah, so that def lifted my spirits today.. help yours any?

Here comes the darkness: The State to take my father away

Matt — Thu, 17 Dec 2009 13:16:53 +0000

I will no doubt blog more on the subject.. unless lawyers should instruct me against such things… but I figure I should say something at this point.. though I will keep it ominously bare of details… suggestive to the imagination.

I’m on the verge of an emotional breakdown.. or.. maybe I’m not. There’s an ambiguity to it.. to it all.. but there are definitely moments where I feel myself to be at that verge. It could be cast into the light of appreciating that today is the 2 year anniversary of my mom’s passing. As near as I’m able to understand, the pain is still more then I’m able to fully take on.. so I experience it in ways where its like.. various psychological forces acting as intermediators between myself and the pain.. but this month.. every once in a while I find myself dropping down into that pain..

To further complicate matter’s there is my father… whom it is my job to take care of. No, I don’t feel I’m doing the greatest job at it.. but.. there is this intervention force, that is now thinking about taking my father away.. placing him in some sorta “home” -ish situation… my approval doesn’t matter…. they’re just going to do it.. and.. while my plan was to put him into an assisted living situation… to begin looking at it sometime after the new year.. It is that this intervention force… errr… it all looks quite dark to me.. like humanity subordinated to the machinery of the state.. so while I don’t object to my father being put in such a situation, I do object to the course they take in achieving this.,.. To how I’m treated.. and even, in places, how my father is treated: The Process

They have inaccurate perceptions of things, and they don’t care that these are inaccurate.. they will not subject them to debate.. or that there manner of proceeding could do more damage then good.. they seem to merely care about there perceptions..

The part of me that thinks my father could be better off in such a scenario is not terribly bothered by all this.. I mean that I’m having trouble coping, and that it may be adversely effecting my father… but the system still echo’s Nietzsche’s line “The state that coldest of cold monsters.”

Anyway, I’ll likely post more sometime soon.

My recent networking wifi internet woes, and the studio move

Matt — Mon, 07 Dec 2009 08:18:06 +0000

I’ve been going without internet for a while now.. well.. actually I only have internet on my laptop, not my desktop.. which is all backwards… I went without any internet for about two days… and this apparently triggered a freak out online.. which is sorta mysterious.. and mystically my friend Greg PC showed up at my door to help matters… he’d never been to my door before.. and somehow the knocking at the somewhat late hour freaked me out and it took a while to regain my head.. so why not talk about this story?

It all started when I bought a certain microphone preamp.. Microphone preamps can be quite expensive.. I’ll likely make a post about this soon.. I got mine for a little less then half the list price.. well, it was used.. but Jesus, half off the list price? I would not have been able to afford this preamp other wise.. and it was a kind of preamp I REALLY wanted! So lots of excitement.. couldn’t wait to try it out.. but there was one problem..

The manual was more adamant then any manual I had ever seen.. on the importance of grounding.. which is to say.. the 3 prong plug thing.. blah blah blah.. and in the room that used to be my studio.. there was no such 3 pronged plug.. which meant.. if I wanted to play it safe.. I’d have to move the studio.. which.. was no small feat!

The biggest issue, of course, was the internet.. Version is my ISP.. it comes into my room via a drilled hole in the wall.. to this modem with wifi.. which I connected to via an ethernet cable but.. its not terribly mac friendly the way they’ve set it up.. so.. in order to ACTUALLY have wifi throughout the house.. and to actually be able to move files between computers.. via Wifi.. I can’t use there wifi..

I don’t really know what I’m doing.. so I wont go into all the gory details… but something funky was going on.. and I don’t get it.. where I couldn’t get my bass station and time capsule to get internet via the modem.. which is both why I had not internet for two days, and also why this laptop is my only internet connection.

I don’t really understand the networking thing today.. all the details.. Mac’s tend to simplify all the technical stuff.. but.. they simplify it to a point that.. if you have to go out of the simple zone.. you’re suddenly in this very disorientating world.. if you don’t know what your doing. Definitely painful!

But the good news is the studio is now mostly moved.. to the TV room.. which is sorta dramatically different, and has 2 dramatic implications.

Its a lot bigger.. which means I can bring parts of my studio into service which I’ve more or less had hidden away for ages… like say my 16 channel digital mixer
It’s a lot bigger.. which presents a different sorta acoustic situation.. the principle issue for acoustics in this situation is you don’t want the acoustics of the listening space interfering with the sound your ears are hearing.. and small spaces are notoriously hard to deal with… in the TV room.. there’s lots of space.. so.. by the time the audio bounces off a wall or something, and gets back to my ear.. it’s so low in volume.. that its not really coloring my impressions.. plus there are fairly sound absorbing surfaces in the space.. so.. I could finally make the move away from headphones to monitors.

I suppose this bears talking about. For a number of reasons it is considered a no no to mix on headphones.. but, given a choice between low end monitors and a terrible acoustic environment.. and higher end headphones.. take the headphones!!!

The jump to monitors, at least for me, is pretty mind blowing.. and yes… they are, at least in terms of price, low end monitors.. but I think they are quite nice.. as does Mr. BT.. and the guy at the store was like “yeah, if I had only this much to spend this is what I’d get.” Oh.. and not only are they relatively cheap.. but they were having a Thanksgiving weekend special deal on them!

Of course the only trouble is one of the monitors is defective.. so I have to go return it for another pair once they get them in.. hopefully tomorrow.. but.. what you find is a whole lot more detail.. you’re able to hear.

This is a somewhat odd thing.. you listen to.. well mostly I’ve been listening to the sound track of command and conquer.. which I’ve always regarded as a somewhat generic sound track.. but now that I can hear the details.. I’m actually quite impressed.. of course you can argue that they sure as hell should have made it sound better on lesser speakers.. but that’s sorta besides the point..

Anyway… yeah.. so I feel like I’m leveling up!

Debating Participating in Black Friday

Matt — Fri, 27 Nov 2009 15:48:42 +0000

So I find myself debating participating in this here black friday stuff.. but.. I find there’s a couple problems.

What exactly is on sale? Its not real clear to me what is… or where I should go..
Much of what I’ve seen on sale, via the internet, is sorta like.. not really that big a deal.
Dealing with all the people who are out, waiting in lines, all the rest of it.. not really my idea of a good time.

One of the rumors that was going on was about Apple having some pretty decent deals on computers. There’s one computer that I kinda sorta find myself looking at from Apple.. I don’t REALLY feel the need to upgrade accept.. well.. if I want to go out and do live shows.. and just cause of how Apple sorta sets up there line.. this forces me into there more expensive computers.. and um.. well.. they are offering around $100 off.. which.. is fine accept that I was thinking if I was going to buy said computer, I’d wait till Apple refreshed it.. and that $100 off.. I guess I just sorta feel like.. if you factor in the need for an upgrade.. it should perhaps be less then that anyway.

Other then that there is a thing going on at guitar center… which is not terribly huge.. but I do have stuff there thats on my to do list..

All and all, I’m against buying stuff that I wasn’t going to buy anyway. I tend to have a pretty broad range of things I’m thinking about for studio upgrades, or whatever.. which gives me flexibility where.. if I see something going cheap.. ok, maybe I’ll pick that thing up.. but if its not in that thought process.. its not a deal.. its getting you to spend money on something you wouldn’t other wise spend money on.

I will say, from what I’ve heard.. that Wallmart is sorta the place to go.. and that they have sales on both Blue Ray players and HD TVs that are pretty remarkable. Also I’ve seen individual movies at Amazon that are quite well priced..

Some of the visual effects I’m looking to do requires multiple video cameras.. so I was thinking if there were such things at a low enough price today, that picking one up might not be a bad idea.. plus to have HD for a multi cam shout would be desirable..

But over all? I think I’ll pass.

The one thing I will say is that.. this is the start of a time that’s pretty horrible if you want to go shopping for anything… I mean the mob scene at the stores… and this sorta makes me nervous in that.. I’m really feeling the need to update my wardrobe a little bit, and maybe my father’s to.. all I really have to ware, pants wise, is swet pants… and every single pair has ether a whole in the pockets, or along the legs.. plus.. not really the most fashionable thing, ha?

Struggling With Your Self

Matt — Tue, 29 Sep 2009 06:48:52 +0000

Howz abouts another crazed entry? Sure, why not? I hear this first paragraph is very important.. you gotz to makez it keyword rich.. but is that how you wantz to start off your blog entry? With some keyword rich action? What is this, a newspaper; where we gotta give you an overview of whatever it is I’m going to post about in the first paragraph.. and then kinda go into it a little here, a little there.. circling around.. till I’m finally allowed to deep dive? Is that how we are to do it? How it’s supposed to work? Well I mean.. whatz ifz I’z wants to do something else.. I mean.. half the time I start a post and I don’t know what the hell it is I’m going to write about it.. till I getz to it. So who knows whatz the hellz this one’s going to be about? More social media bitching perhaps?

I don’t know.. I’m in a weird mood thinking about everything… See I’ve been sick in bed for a freaking week.. and it sucks.. cause I walk around wondering what the hell happened to my momentum.. plus my life is at this weird point where we kinda don’t know what’s up.. with various things.. and.. its like the cliff hanger sustains.. so we can’t quite acclimate to to whatever the actuality turns out to be.. and we got a lot of this kinda thing to start working out.

But then I fell into this odd way of thinking… that basically.. its kinda all in my mind anyway.. or I mean.. a certain amount of it is. Or.. see it’s like.. what’s there to be anxious about, really? I’m not saying there’s not a lot.. or that there’s not a lot on my plate, and life isn’t overwhelming in reality.. and that I’m still feeling like I’m failing to live up to it all.. I’m not debating that part of it.. more the big picture anxiety over living through this and getting to some better reality.. All the feeling of.. like that will never happen… and the wondering how much of my life’s efforts might be in vane, or any of that.

So here’s a little tip from you’re uncle Matt.. when you’re in that there valley of darkness.. this is not the time to assess such things! In the dark.. so much is in shadow.. and.. what you see in the shadow.. in all the question marks… tends to be just a projection of your mood.. and if your mood is dark.. well.. there you go. And with this comes the question of.. just what is momentum..

A couple latter:

Seems like I’m circling around a thought worthy of examination.. which is like.. about the baggage we cary with us through our life.. its effects on pathology, and the unfolding of our lives.. This feeling like.. if we could just break through it.. but somehow breaking through seems.. beyond what we are capable of.. and you wonder if you’re like some elephant that was taught he was caged.. by a giant chain around his leg.. and now it’s just a string.. but we still feel the cage.

I have found.. I absolutely can walk outside my own cage. I have.. in various ways.. and yet it is still there.. and yet, is it?

One of the things I was thinking about.. oh a month or back or so.. was the importance of interacting with lots of people.. for the sake of my sanity.. And in social media.. I discovered this by going to a bunch of tweet ups.. I have lots of social media friends.. friends I enjoy hanging out with.. having a beer with.. etc.. But now it’s looking like I might not be able to make so many tweet ups.. meet ups.. or whatever.

The thing about hanging out with lots of different groups of people.. having lots of different types of friends is.. the way we kind of define our selves socially.. that is how our identity in part comes from this social interaction.. and Well this might sound like crazy talk.. it’s part of a theory I developed under the influence of psychedelics.. that as a part of social cohesion.. there is a kind of center point that happens when you interact with one or more person.. that.. in a certain way.. could be thought of as a kind of modified version of Freud’s super ego.. whatever it is that brings us together.. or whatever it is that we have in the way of shared values.. because like our value system.. and the basis of social hierarchy.. sorta..

For men, of course, pecking order is very important.. and the vibe you have about your place in the universe.. and all this.. Now.. the deal about the value of lots of people.. means you have lots of little places where different things are valued.. different parts of your being.. So.. your view of your self.. if not super good.. could have something to do with the folks you are hanging out with.. the world you’re in…

This is not to cast aspersions to the folks I regularly hang with.. but that my regular experience is not… ideal in terms of my whole self.. that its unbalanced..

So in this sense.. the cage within.. and is it really a cage at all.. how much of this feeling is a part of a sense of identity.. based on the world I’m experiencing myself through? Is what I’m asking…

We are a complex web of interrelated wills.. a will echo system if you will.. that has some sorta interrelationship with our needs as human beings.. and how well or poorly these things are being met. To attack the problem in a kinda Maslow hierarchy sorta way.. it can be hard to reach higher stages of spiritual enlightenment when there’s some question of if you’ll even be able to eat tonight.. But I think there’s lots of hierarchy’s in us.. not just Maslow’s.. surrounding all sorts of things.. so that there are certain things we can’t achieve until this other set of things is taken care of.. and this is the sorta thing that can create creative blocks.. or just whatever.. and sometimes you just have to kinda put you’re ear to the unconscious to find your way to the next place you need to be at.

So in this way it’s all quite hard to tell what’s really up inwardly.. what’s creating the cage phenomenon of the mind sorta feeling..

A couple latter:

I think I mentioned somewhere.. this association I’m having between sickness and and neurosis.. neurosis being a substitution.. substituting illegitimate suffering for legitimate suffering.. not that being sick isn’t a legitimate thing.. but.. it’s at least neurosis like in that you aren’t doing anything about whatever the thing is.. that you should be doing something about.. and the like between excuse and reason can be fuzzy..

Speaking of which.. I’d finish this thought.. but I have things to attend to.

Hello World, and other fine tunes: Of blogging and Social Media: existential relationship to strategy

Matt — Mon, 28 Sep 2009 21:02:28 +0000

I guess I’ve been posting some crazy ass posts while sick, ha? It’s good to post! I encountered this bit of inspiration over at Pluperfecter.. this interview of Steven aka Vaspers the Grate from some 5 years ago.. On the subject of what a blog is.. Steven quoted Doc Searls… a blog post being like an email to the world.. and this thought just sorta inspired me.. should I blog like that? Should I blog as if this were a personal email to the world? Me to you? And you over there as well?

You know.. I can dig that kinda idea.. like.. I don’t know.. so often there’s all this “how to blog” crap.. smart crap though it can be.. it’s the game of it.. everything from your SEO / SEM / Copywriting, key working, whatever ing.. top 10 lists.. and God knows what else. I mean sure.. it can all be good.. but um.. I don’t know.. I never feel totally comfortable with it.. just as I’ve never felt totally comfortable with best practices.. I’m not trying to refute there utility.. and it’s not that I want to sabotage my own plight.. It’s just that sometimes it feels like just a lot of rubbish to get in the way… You know?

I don’t know.. I feel as if.. on some level.. if I blog there should be some sorta strategery about it.. or some purpose.. some excuse to poor energy into it.. I wonder if I’m adding any value to the world or to anything.. Why am I doing this again? If strategical.. shit, my spell checker didn’t underline that word.. is that a real wold?.. err.. strategical tactical al-tick-al whatever.. el.. Salvador of dolly.. parton.. pardons.. I don’t fucking know.. but just the..

Ok.. so there’s an ecosystem that works a certain way.. which causes somethings to rise, somethings to fall.. blah blah blah.. and the el strategic-o tacktic-o is in part born out of a close observation of how all this works and “How you to can be a social media rock star” or at least.. well.. whatever.. and I think all this is important.. and if you have a goal.. and that goal is your success metric.. well.. you ought to adopt all that…

But then I think.. and I think real deeply.. so deeply.. it-id scare your mofo ass.. you know.. like “what’s this life for” deep? Well screw that line of questioning as that make you walk around like a head without a body.. lol, which is to say not walk all that well at all. . No what I’m thinking more is like.. look inward.. Who is you, what is you about? Like really on the super deep levels. Deep enough that you eventually get to darkness and must confess incomplete knowledge on the subject.. and here, if nothing else.. aren’t you supposed to be the supreme grand-poo-bah expert on the subject of who and what you is? And you don’t fucking know? If you hit rock star big.. good luck to you’re F’n biographers right?

Yeah, I’d bitch at those vicarious-ism addicts to… which would bring me to this crazy existential question I’ve been pondering lately.. but.. we’ll skip that for now..

I’m thinking about mind mapping the subject.. kinda mandala esk action for yeah.. like what’s all the crap on your mind.. not just consciously.. what are the things you are after.. what’s up with these obsessions of yours.. looking at all the aims you gotz in your life.. map that shit out.. see the cross relationships..

So like each thing you do is like a piece of puzzle of a bigger you… a Nietzschean super man quest.. err.. well maybe you’re not that bad ass but.. to one extent or another we are always in a process of waking up to our selves.. and we have.. lets say it is a part of the soul.. a kind of destiny.. that we are always driving towards.. with all our pathology stuff.. conscious or not.. this is what all our impulses are doing.. even if we are tangled in knots and.. our lives a mess.. and whatever else..

So if you view a blog inside of these terms.. if it, in the biggest of all pictures, is about your becoming.. then it’s success has to do with your becoming’s success.. and that is an utterly different thing from all SEO / SEM, top 10 lists of whatever strategical tactical al-ical of the smart sort… or that is just a part of this larger thing..

A few latter:

Well I gotta work out what I’m going to do with this whole blogging thing.. or it’s on the to do list of stuff to work out.. but I like this idea of the personal email to the world.. and I like the idea of being an anarchist in the writing..

View from the sick haze

Matt — Sat, 26 Sep 2009 15:03:25 +0000

I am sick.. have been sick for a bit now.. 7, 8 days? Sick in bed?

There’s a strange surreal dream world.. that happens as waking life withers.. away to very little… See the unconscious, who speaks in dreams… is to balance the attitudes of consciousness… and when there is so little consciousness.. what is it to balance? Unless being sick its self is an effort to balance.

Everything feels just a little bit bent.. that odd taste in your mouth..

Outside life slips away.. you say “well I’m sick, what can I do about it?” But these words feel like neurosis… In your heart you feel like you need to fight.. to fight your way into the light.

And what are the inputs.. laying hear in this bed in the basement.. surrounded by a mess.. this laptop playing movies.. we’ve gone through Lord Of The Rings, Basic Instinct, Bourn Identities… many commentaries.. online documentaries of Carl Jung.. a few pages of his seminars on Thus Spoke Zarathustra.. swings at working on the DMI class homework.. that should have been emailed days ago. There’s a couple recent, and one current, sound on sound magazines just to the side..

In sickened states I have made my way to grocery stores to try and stock up on OJ, NyQuil, fruit… something or another to eat.. and still.. even now, fast food takes up too much of my diet..

Where my life is now.. it’s not a good place.. and the sickness keeps me from being able to do much to improve it.

As I write these words I feel tired… should I just layback down, roll back over, and reenter the dreams?

I’ve had some odd dreams lately.. I can’t remember most of the sick ones.. but before the sickness got me.. I met my son.. whom I had had with some women I had never physically met but only talked to online.. and how happy I was to meet him.. and to take up the fatherly roll.. in the dream he was my son, no question about it… but you and I, us waking life people.. we know that for children to be made, it helps to have a conception..

A post from the grips of a not so good mood

Matt — Wed, 23 Sep 2009 08:48:46 +0000

I’m not even sure I want to talk about it.. or just what I want to say publicly about my situation.. but.. well, I’m in a VERY dark mood.. A fucked up scary dark mood. I feel like.. Jesus, when I think about it.. let my mind stray back through the days of my life.. It seems like there was always just too much fucking darkness, you know? Like here I am, still struggling.. hope dawned in a way, for a brief moment.. like no one’s business.. and now it’s being rudely yanked from my hands as I’m thrown into the abyss.

In a mood like this you think of two possible options.. giving up, or fighting harder. The fighting harder option is like the silver lining in a dark cloud.. It suggest that the fight it’s self might be your salvation.. but.. the mood is so dark that you feel like.. well you can’t really fight in this kind of a mood… cause in this kind of a mood every little setback can seem so monumental…

But what the fuck, what if I give everything I fucking have?

That, of course, is a deep fucking thought. Sure, on the surface it might sound trite.. but.. well maybe it’s just me.. when I say give everything I fucking have.. in means every fucking inch of every muscle.. every everything.. every iota of anything you got… just fucking throw it at the bastard! I mean what the fuck! I mean if you were going to give up anyway? Why not give it a shot at least?

And what exactly is giving up? That is perhaps the interesting thing… giving up.. well, from that vantage point where we find me today.. giving up is like rolling over… and letting the current take me to sea or some shit like that.. and the thing of it is… is that I just can’t take that, you know what I mean? I mean I have a breaking point.. at which point.. I don’t know..

That’s another problem, which way I break. See there’s a darkness in me.. and if shit gets too bad.. I get pushed the wrong way too much… well it could be bad. If things go the other way.. I don’t know.. maybe things become ok? I don’t know.

But the point is that the giving up option.. is really the refusal to choose an option.. it’s a refusal to accept legitimate suffering.. and it causes a whole other class of suffering. So.. I mean.. what the hell difference does it make anyway?

Hope.. that’s an elusive motherfucker… I tasted that mother.. I could fucking taste it..

So, here’s the deal, as I see it.. It’s no holds bared going for it. It’s work your ass off going for it.. It’s burn your self out going for it.. It’s give everything going for it.

Of course I can’t do that right now.. I’m sick, still.. still under the weather. I’ve been sick since… well I first felt it coming on lest Friday night and its now like.. late Tuesday night.. I am not a fully functioning motherfucker.. I’m like.. in a position where I better not push it too far I’ll tell you.

Tomorrow morn, no doubt, brother Evan shall show up.. and we’ll strategize this or that and I’ll speak of my woes and have some sense of.. well at least being able to talk about it and.. whatever.

Hmm.. it’s a weird fucking life man…

I was just thinking about before my Mom died.. the kind of fears I had of what life would likely look like after that. What’s sorta weird is that.. I feel stronger today.. I think in large measure cause I at least have the right tools, finally.. and that gives me something.

Now the deal is to try and take that to the max.

Ok, how about I end this post with a little mood music

Odd how well this song matches my mood