Down the Rabbit Hole...

I borrowed a Banjo from my friend this thing is fucking awesome. Rather soon I plan to try and record with it.

My landlord is having our apartment sprayed for bugs, so I had to leave for a bit, but it's good because it's giving me an excuse to run errands.

I seem to have very little energy... I'm pretty much un-addicted to caffeine and energy drinks but I'm just lethargic. How much of it is chemical/nutritional and how much of it is political? Economic news is of course horribly depressing... even the left wing news, while it's honest and generally right, can't offer much for inspiration, at least at the moment. There is a feeling that the walls are closing in. Tunnel vision... The weather is getting cold... and you don't even feel like taking off your clothes to have sex with someone when it's really cold inside the house. Being broke and jobless in a new town where you know few people, even if the town is decidedly hip and friendly, and be quite a challenge.

I'm trying to pass myself off as a writer to various places that are hiring. This seems to be the least worst professional option. I looked at truck driving a lot but most well paying gigs need CDL and/or Hazmat certification and that's a bit more serious of a commitment than I'm ready for, plus those people get to travel but they're always running around to beat a clock, and have very little time to enjoy where they travel to. Just driving a 20 foot box truck around the front range for deliveries at $11 an hour has very little romance or long range prospects...

I'm sort of caught here between my background a serious political activist and my desire to hide from politics and the world and have as little as possible to do with them... I'd rather not return any phone calls and just try and survive myself, even if I have to do it in a snowy forest living off deer... but this is a dead end and only makes me want to come home and take a shower and cook over a nice stove where I don't have to be all hunched over all the time. The gloves I have with fingers aren't warm enough... the warm gloves I have don't have fingers... and I can't afford new gloves. At any rate... artistic inspiration and decent writing only comes from actually interacting with the world and getting influence from other people, or at least in the echoes that come with bouncing your ideas and positions off theirs...

Somewhere there is a quote about the world being full of impoverished, well educated, smart and creative types... and how self discipline is really more important in the financial long run of success than any creativity... and of course people who obediently follow directions and say yes to everyone ranking above them tend to get promoted better and have more job security. I'm inclined to agree with he who writes that Wanderlust is the kiss of death.

Yet even today the economy's collapse shows what a dead end Prussian obedience to established, corporate authority is... so here we are stuck, between one failed economic-political reality and the inability of confused, artistic radicals like me to come up with much that's serious and well laid out in a timely, effective manner.

So I'm inclined to spin off into all sorts of contradictory directions like a broken compass... One minute: fuck music, sell all the studio and get rid of it once and for all... but then what? Next minute: finish the album, get it out there, make sampler CD's for buried electric records and hand them to people outside of night clubs... Maybe I need to sit and think calmly... maybe the last of that trucker speed is what I need to finish mixing this thing.... or to write something with more of a pulse... maybe I should join that metal band, even though I don't really like metal that much, and who the fuck is going to invest in new bands right now?

As always, the struggle continues...