Movement

After a long and much delayed time away from blogging I have returned to filling the pages.

Today's topic- Movement

As a culture we seem to always need to be moving, a theme very apparent in our society today. Everyone is going somewhere or doing something and when your not then something is wrong. I have always wondered why we will feel the need to be moving so much and why just being stuck in neutral is never an option. The only time I can say I was ever truly just in the moment and without worry about movement was for one day while I was backpacking in Montana. Dale and I arrived at St. Mary's, a very small town which was very much a tourist part of the park. We had nothing to do all day and we could not leave the area until the next day. So for about 8-10 hours we lived in a 200 yard stretch of nothing more then some restaurants and gift shops.

My overall experience was that being stuck for a moment was not so bad. It actually became quite the pastime once we got few mountain dews and sat down. It gave us time to think about our trip and ease our minds for a moment. In the future when I look back on the trip I feel that I will always remember that day for its uniqueness. How just for a moment I realized how nice it is to be doing nothing at all for once. So now as I run around doing things and trying to entertain myself, maybe one day Ill just sit around again and do absolutely nothing.

Death Be Not Proud

I was in the Boston Common as I was walking back from the Park Street T station. I had my backpack on since I had just traveled from home and I felt for a second like a summer tourist. This is partly because of the sixty degree weather in middle December, however I was in the site seeing mood. So, as I past some of the monuments I stopped to take a look and read for a second. History has always interested me. What I noticed though is that a lot of the statues, which were dedicated to a specific person began with something along the lines of "Died in 1823, blah blah blah".

Here I realized how odd it is to start a monument for someone with there death. Why do we feel the need to always preface a monument to someone with their death? In fact I am not really sure why we would even include death unless done in noble fashion. I mean do we credit death as being that important, that we feel the need to give it precedence over any other information about this man or woman. This brings me to a poem that is featured in the play "Wit" by Margaret Edson known as Holy Sonnet X.

It reads:
Death be not proud, though some have called thee
Mighty and dreadfull, for, thou art not so,
For, those, whom thou think'st, thou dost overthrow,
Die not, poore death, nor yet canst thou kill me.
From rest and sleepe, which but thy pictures bee,
Much pleasure, then from thee, much more must flow,
And soonest our best men with thee doe goe,
Rest of their bones, and soules deliverie.
Thou art slave to Fate, Chance, kings, and desperate men,
And dost with poyson, warre, and sicknesse dwell,
And poppie, or charmes can make us sleepe as well,
And better then thy stroake; why swell'st thou then;
One short sleepe past, wee wake eternally,
And death shall be no more, death thou shalt die.

I am thinking about turning a line of it into a tattoo possibly

Hi,
Andrew

"Soon we will be wearing suits and buying birthday cakes"

I have been thinking a lot lately about the way in which we prioritize our lives. It seems like for whatever reason, probably due to something involving logistics, we never put that which we care most about in the world first. Now of course when something major happens, usually bad, for a moment we seem to adjust where our priorities lie, but why is this the only time we do this. Why does regular daily life have a separate system of priorities. I find that a lot of times people just seem to be doing what is most logical for them to fit into society, like working a job that they may not like, or putting too much time into something they could care less about.

You may be saying well of course this is the way it is, for a world in which we all only do what we really want, there would be chaos and nothing important would get done. Now I can't wholly agree with this because I believe the important things like producing food, making a living, helping a friend would still happen in this world. All we would be doing is taking more time to do something or create something we really want. In essence we would be giving our lives purpose day in and day out.

Obviously here I am preaching to the youth or the world because this is time to do something special and make sure you haven't missed out of something you will regret. This is why I have never put grades or education over important life situations. This is generally where the youth gets confused, because good grades and writing a good paper, in a year or even a day wont matter to you. Its not going to make your life the way you have always wanted. Education is there to teach if anything that you gotta find something your passionate about and go for it with all your heart, because why not now? As my great friend Neil once said "soon we will be wearing suites and buying birthday cakes", and by this time it may be too late to get something you really wanted, and you will wish you had not spent so much time worrying about your ethics grade. IN 20 years none of that will matter but a lot of other things will.

Enjoy
Andrew

"I No Longer Feel I Have to Be James Dean"

Something I absolutely love about music and life is their innate ability to fuse together and become almost one thing, moving together. I have always thought that my life is set to music, for I carry my ipod at my side and spend at least 20% of any given day with music on. For me music is the one constant that can always keep stability. Life can be a whirlwind at times and it almost seems as though music can slow it down, speed it up, and decipher the infinite puzzle that is life. Some of my best thinking, decision making, and moments in life can be directly connected to one song or one band. It is the closest thing I have come to real magic in life. Music has the power to change things, and that my friend is what makes it so neccesary.

What I love most about music is when you find a new song and it just sticks. Whether it be because of the tempo, the vocals, the time period in which you found it or the person who introduced to it. Its almost like an absolute obession with three minutes of audio. When I come across a song like this I am usually listening to it about four or five times a day at least. This can last a week, a month, some songs I listen to almost everyday. The songs that can be played everyday and always be appropriate are the purest form of music. Music must have one thing, adaptability, along with its meaning. For me right now "5 Years Time" by Noah and the Whale has been screaming across my itunes nonstop for about three days now, and this is where the title of this particular blog comes from. For I actually no longer feel I have to be James Dean, well maybe just a little bit.

Enjoy the sounds of life,
Andrew

View From the Top

I am a watcher of people.

Some would confuse this for a voyeur, however I am not talking at all on a sexual level.

I am a huge advocate for experience but within the same topic I cannot help but watch others experience life. There is something magical about just viewing an action, that appears completely normal and then picking apart the subtle nuisances that make it unique. You have to ability to understand a person on a completely different level when you just focus on their most natural habits.

I have been thinking the best and quite possibly most interesting place for this action is a night shift, preferably at a desk or ideally, watching security cameras. There is some unspoken romantic mystery about the nighttime that I feel would be worth exploring. Plus the whole idea of completely flipping my sleep schedule and living almost reverse of everyone else is intriguing.

Some of the best experiences can only be obtained once you start paying attention to the experiences of others around you. This way you stop trying to understand everything about yourself and begin trying to understand everything about someone else. This is almost more intriguing then anything you will ever find out about yourself.

Just give it a try sometime, what do you think facebook really is,
Andrew

Album to check out: Blitzen Trapper- Furr

We'll Move It, But Don't Guarentee It's Safety

Neil, Ross, Chris Kelly, and I moved an organ for Neil and his Mom. For us this is an ordinary occasion along with moving coke machines, various other organs, and a laundry list of unnecessary items. We delivered the organ to Neil's mom, and she seemed very pleased by the whole endeavor. In a way we felt like Santa Claus, except more real and less fat. There were also no cookies or milk to speak of, however there were poodles.

I don't understand also how people can just give away things as awesome as organs on Craigslist. I heard about someone on Cape who took a piano, a nice almost new piano, and placed it in the woods where someone found it. I at first thought it might be one of my friends, because we had actually thought of this idea. However, someone just stole our idea and did it first. I think we will just leave a coke machine in the middle of the woods, that will show them.

I think the whole barter system we have now is fasinatating. When you start thinking about all the things on craiglist and ebay, people can sell almost anything to anyone. In the past it was a man on a cart carrying things from village to village and selling them off. I wonder if he had a logo on his cart for his company. That guy incorporated or something like that. He probably had alot of cool shit in that cart, people were much more creative back then.

We need some of that creativity these days.

Well I am off,
F.E.U.

Your Going Home Thoreau

Tomorrow I will be making the long, and by long I mean hour and a half trip home for Thanksgiving break. A holiday, which if you think about it is kind of stupid to get three days off for but I guess its our way of "allowing for travel". Its kind of funny to think businesses and schools have to think about things like travel and allow days off just for that. Thanksgiving is one of the only holidays where that happens, which is odd. However, all this packing and thinking about my short vacation somehow turned my mind to Thoreau.

Thoreau, for those who don't know but should know, was a famous transcendentalist (a fancy word for someone against how society is being run), who spend 2 years living on Walden Pond in Mass, trying to show everyone how to live the simple life. He wrote a book while he was there, it became famous, and now Dale looks a lot like him.

My thoughts though was what it must of been like for him to go home after all that time. I mean he spend two years alone, away from any friends and family he had. He must have had some many notifications on Facebook and thousands of emails. I wonder though if he felt much like me, overwhelmed by everything that he has to catch up with, and trying to figure out the whirlwind that is his life. I am sure he went away to figure out a lot of things and I wonder if he did, it would at least give me hope.

On another note I am getting excited for it to snow, if only to make up for the blistering cold. I have always wonder what it would be like to go winter hiking in the mountains and how much tougher it must be. I think eventually I would love to try it because it would be quite beautiful and a good test. I have been listening to the "In An Aeroplane Over the Sea" album by Neutral Milk Hotel, and it would be perfect for winter hiking. Everyone should check it out.

So tomorrow I am off to good ole Cape Cod for lots of fun and lots of thinking. Wish me luck.



Till Sometime Soon,
Andrew

Red Bull Daze and Naps

I woke up this morning for my usually Thursday gauntlet of 3 classes from 8 straight through till 1:30. I usually buy a monster or a red bull so I can get through that first hour and a half and get my day started. I have been doing this almost every Tuesday and Thursday this whole semester and I have noticed something about starting off my day with an energy drink. After about 2 o clock once I have eaten and whatnot I get what I call a "red bull daze". It is a very surreal experience where I am looking around at nothing in particular usually dazing off into space. The weirdest part is that sound starts to blur and its like my mind was hyped up on energy and is now creepy to a slow halt and my whole brain is chaos. Therefore, I cannot make out sounds or focus in on anything at all. I notice that usually I'm not even thinking about anything at all, which is all too weird and freaks me out on a regular basis. I would compare to tunnel vision, but that implies intense focus on one specific thing and that is far from what is going on. This is kinda what I imagine a photo of what I am talking about would look like.

I have decided to take as many naps as possible during the day due to there awesomeness and my lack of sleep at night. This way it allows me to sleep during the day and be rested and stay up late without any regrets. I have not figured out how this will effect my schoolwork but lets keep our fingers crossed.

The Science of Sleep and the Thought

I woke up this morning, two hours after I would of liked and starting thinking as anyone would any regular morning. Finally after about 30 minutes of lying in bed I realize something I had thought right before sleep only 8 hours ago. It got me thinking about all the times I have what at the time seem to be important thoughts, and totally forget them in the morning. It was one of those thoughts that almost keeps you awake too, something that should of been the first thing I thought about in the morning. However it took me a solid 30 minutes of just thinking before I came back across this thought. I found all of that very unnerving because I began to question what is important and how something could lose importance in a period of 8 hours of sleep. Ironically that fear and feeling of uncertainly about importance went away within 5 minutes. Making that thought also unimportant as well. In turn making this paragraph unimportant and most likely forgettable.

The last paragraph also got me thinking about the unimportance of your blogging to other people. You of course being the average blogger who just mumbles your various thoughts onto the web. Yet somehow a lot of people usually find one persons random mumbling quite interesting. Does that make it important? I guess it really does not matter but since I am just throwing words down here I like to think somebody is interested, other them myself of course.

I just got distracted and lost the idea for this blog, uhhhhhhh, The Science of Sleep is a weird movie that I saw with Neil at Nickelodeon cinemas. I would check it out if you want to be blown. That connects to my first paragraph well enough so that works.

I feel this blog is very forgettable, sorry all

Till Tm,
A name that starts with T


P.S. That is Ross in a Elf costume..yay Christmas

Holidays and Sex Changes

In the midst of an extremely long week and following weekend my head is too cluttered to do anything but blog at the moment.

This afternoon Michael and I had a thought about how holidays like Halloween or even now Thanksgiving are just excuses we have made to distract from the fact that life sucks. Not sucks in the scheme of a lifetime, but day to day life can become quite monotonous. For most adults the weekday consists of working, eating, sleeping, and not much room for many other little joys other then their favorite Wednesday night sitcom. It was a pointless conversation but we established that people make holidays excuses to go out and party and most of the time look like fools because during the week they would rather be acting like that anyway. However, in a world where everyone runs around dressed as nurses and celebrating the idea of landing on a rock, not much would get done. It is however necessary so we can all stay a little sane.

We also wondered if one half of a married couple got a sex change, would their marriage not be recognized anymore. We sort of agreed that there must be something saying you were a male or female at the time of marriage, and also decided we are not sure if you can completely legally change your gender.

I saw Iron and Wine featuring the man above Sam Beam. The concert was quite worth it due to a man who played a thousand mystery items and the fact that we were literally sitting on stage at the bands feet. If you have not heard any of Sam's stuff, check it out if only for his sick beard.

After the week I will be ready for the Thanksgiving break, mostly due to the lack of sleep I will be getting the next few nights. Neil, Ross, and I will be podcasting this break for our show The Greenlight Podcast, which you can find on Itunes if you feel so inclined.

Here is an amazing Iron and Wine live clip that you should watch because if your a human you will like it, Aliens need not apply

Boy With A Coin Live

Deviating From The Norm

I have decided that I shall for at least one or maybe two entries, remove myself from talking about general, and usually vague ideas and for once talk about myself. Hopefully it will be interesting and if not well who cares, its not like anyone is reading this bullshit anyway. But in case in some drunken or half asleep state someone may run across this blog and wonder, what is going on in Andrew's life, I will continue this entry.

Its seems that my life has been changing very rabidly or not at all. I cannot yet tell what is really going on or happening but I definitely have been thinking a lot more often. First off my foot is itching like a bitch, so there is that. I have been drifting b]etween wanting to be on the move and wanting to stay in one spot. I have not spent a weekend either on a film shoot, at Amherst, or at home in the last five weeks. I cannot tell if this is because I do not want to be on campus or what but something has subconsciously pushed me to creating such a schedule. I have come to the conclusion that it is probably the fact that I am very, very confused about the direction my life is going and so moving and keeping busy, at least gives me something to grasp on to. At the same time as all this though I wouldnt mind just sitting in one spot for a little while and I am hoping that winter break will help me figure out all of this nonsensical bullshit.

I got back together with Gina, which I believe is the right move and now I have to make up for some mistakes I have made in the past, but its worth it. I am also doing a pretty good job of keeping my grades up I think, and overall happy with how this year is going. However I am desperately slowly crawling towards winter break, which hopefully will go much like last years did. I believe my winter break last year was some of the best months I have spent but I also believe it was a lot of people in the right place at the right time and the odds of that perfect mixture again are less then likely. However the LAN is living on and I can only hope that the laughs, jokes, and beardz will keep flowing as they should. I guess with every new situation though there comes different positives and even though this winter break will not be the same as last year, it can be just as good. The J on my mac keyboard is broken, btw.

I plan on getting a Daniel Johnston T shirt, new awesome headphones, 4 Gb of RAM for my computer, and a new motor for the coke machine this winter break. As well hopefully go to one Celtics and game and one Bruins game. Going home this weekend with Gina, Jim is also going home. I can hear Kris watching the replay of the Bruins game we just went to, Candians fans are failures. Tim Kelly is rollin in the vidz kid, with the bottles in the case on the island. Can't wait to Lan------>

Experiences and the point of life

Throughout the years numerous people have tried to figure out who should be able to judge another and why. What gives lets say me the right to judge your actions? How am I supposed to understand your ideas or your views? The answer is experience. Life and everything we understand comes from experience. You learn how to walk by experiencing crawling, and watching others as they walk. You learn how to do math by experiencing a teacher do math on the board. In life experiences gives us the ability to understand the world. In John Stuart Mill's version of Utilitarianism, only those that have experienced both sides of a pleasure or pain are allowed to determine which is indeed higher. An example would be, a man who has worked his whole life as a gravedigger could not understand the pleasures of being a doctor, unless he himself has been a doctor. The same goes for the doctor who judges the gravedigger without actually ever being one himself.

This theory can then be applied to any belief, idea, or action. I am given the right to judge your idea because I have experienced both sides. A man who sits in his room all day, never experiencing the world around him will certainly never know any pain or pleasure. Now it is true with more experience comes the possibility for more types of pain, but this is a risk worth taking. For "it is better to be a Socrates dissatisfied then a fool satisfied". When I look at the world I see many people who are afraid to experience, to explore the world, to step out to their comfort zone and learn. Here though it is obvious to see that our life is nothing without experience. Without experience we would be a helpless, no knowledge beast. So I say to those who feel that they need to experience and live for a change, go out and do it. Any experience good or bad is never a wasted experience, because when the time comes for you to understand the world around you, you will be able to do it not as a fool but as a Socrates.

Stop & Smell the Roses

When the hell are we going to start living for something more then power, success or fame and fortune? In todays society very few people actually sit down for a second and realize what the hell all this shit is leading to. If you went out onto the street and asked 10 people what they are trying accomplish here on earth none of them would give an accurate response. We cannot take pride or take joy in anything anymore because everything we do is in light of another goal. We do our schoolwork to get into college, we get into college to get a good job, we get a good job that we hate so we can support a family and get retired, and then when we are retired we get sick of that just get too old too fast. There has to be a point in there where we as soceity ask where is this all going. Not a list of goals per say but just and idea of what makes our time on earth worth it. We need to get up and spend more time doing things that are going to make us happy now, that our going to change someones life or everyones life. We need to get passionate about something and start doing it. What if we never wasted a day, never gave up on something we cared about. We slowly forget the things that make us feel alive, the things that make us who we are in light of things that accomplish the "greater goal". The light of the things that we believe are necessary for us to do. I say lets cut the bullshit and live each day not like its our last but like it means something. So in the end when we do give up this right to live we can at least say we did it with style, our own style and not look back and say who was I. You need to be able to look back and at least laugh a little, because it was a good ride.

Old Random Thoughts

CM

This is just an excerpt of some stuff written last year in a 3am daze. I thought it was worth putting up just to get some of it out there because I can say that it is very real.

I am very unsure about my future. This time off has brought to light many problems that I have refused to examine in the past. With hours to think old nerves and walls appear once again. These are the things that can stop a man from really living, fear to let go of what you think is right and wrong. Fear to live outside ones comfort and outside ones mind. Once one can admit fear, accept fear, and test the fear and at least try, then they can say they have lived

When I think about what makes me roll out of bed in the morning, what keeps me moving even when i can understand why, I realize its not a personal drive. Its the people that really care about you, the ones you go to when you need to laugh, cry, or just blurt out whatever you wanna say. The people who it doesn't matter what you say to them because they will always make the conversation worth it, the ones who in one line can make your whole day, those are the ones you keep close. Everyday a thought will pass my mind and it will make me feel good about everything and that makes it easier to be alive. "Happiness is only real when shared" and its all about who you share it with. You can be without family, without money, without a job, or even without faith and friends can always keep you center. They can keep you thinking, feeling, laughing, crying, and always they can make you a better person. You feel responsible for them, you begin to care about something other then yourself, you learn to love and your learn to deal. Friends can teach you and give you the world, you just have the find the right ones.

Hi, How Are You

CM
Daniel Johnston, the close to insane man who wrote about the Devil and Casper, who achieved his highest fame while in a mental hospital made famous the shirt Hi, How Are You, where the title of this blog comes from. His songs and his style were both original and sometimes very far out there, but they all held similar themes and a unique style. I hope to replicate that here in blog form and put together not just incoherent ramblings about my day to day life but something that will,hopefully, eventually be something someone will actually be interested in. Ill try my best to keep themes and some sense of a small grasp on reality. I cannot promise anything though, so here we go I guess because Albert Camus once said "The purpose of a writer is to keep civilization from destroying itself". Its scary that I am now your savior....think about that .