http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tjcT-ty_3Vs
Don't die: you know the truth is some do. Go write your message on the pavement, burnin' so bright I wonder what the wave meant. White heat is screaming in the jungle, complete the motion if you stumble, go ask the dust for any answers. All on a spaceship persevering, use my hands for everything but steering. The world... I love, the tears I drop to be part of the wave can't stop: ever wonder if it's all for you. Can't stop the Gods from engineering.
Monday, December 14, 2009
Thursday, December 10, 2009
Children Of The Revolution
How has communication changed. In the past, our grandparents sent each other endless letters; today, we're sharing status on Facebook. Today, we hope the other will notice the catchy sentences we dedicate to him quoting a television show or a song. Today, if we want someone to indirectly understand something, we share a link on our personal profile.
And that's not all: as I mentioned before, nowadays quotes from Shakespeare rather than Wilde are increasingly rare. I myself have often started my posts here writing quotes from many different TV series or posted lyrics and music videos to express my several moods. Yes, because the truth is that if you are not really into talk or write about yourself, hiding behind phrases written by others and let them speak for yourself (or, even better, to tell you)...It is so bad easier. Perhaps coward, perhaps even absurd, but always easier. And it's good, because some of these sentences are not maybe written by Dorothy Parker, but they are equally wonderful indeed.
And today, after all, communication has become even this: to treat lyrics as if they were amazing poems, film scripts as if they were the greatest prose novels of the past. Frankly, I have always believed that "common" people (so, you know, a singer rather than a poet of the Romantic Age) were those closest to "common" mood and thought of all of us. I find myself much more easily in a dialogue from "Grey's Anatomy" or in Aerosmith's songs rather than in a Leopardi's poem. And I'm not afraid to tell it. And these are the reasons why I often choose to let them speak for me; often, you've got the feeling that a song just knows you so well, so deeply, more than how a real person who actually knows you is able to do, that you feel as you could have written it yourself. Or, better yet, that the singer wrote it just thinking about you. For you, only and exclusively for you. I love going to concerts and I've hated study poetry. I love prose but I rather a "real" book, "raw", "stark" and closer to me by Salinger than a novel by Manzoni. And, I repeat, I'm not afraid nor ashamed to tell it.
The methods of communication have changed as well as have changed (also and especially) its contents: I think to know both is fundamental, those belonging to the past and those produced by our present and imminent future, because only then you could choose and have a preference. I believe it is fair and important to study our past among school desks, but we should give more room to both present and future: I do not expect in a book of English literature to be included The Beatles' lyrics (well, maybe... Yes, I do.), but at least that it didn't stop at the first, remote, half of the 20th century as mine did.
Here's the truth: life changes, but, more often, we didn't together with her. We often stay anchored to our past that, however glorious might have been and still remain, it's always "past" and cannot be so badly integral part of the present, often choking, swallowing it. For example, I think school books are still too bourgeois in their dealing with very dated, courtly, complex topics: simplicity, however, is not always a bad thing. Sometimes communicate in a "popular" way, in its considered derogatory meaning, is the best way instead, the more pure and beautiful one to touch people's hearts. Yes, people: how can be actually negative the fact that someone or something wants directly talk to people? Books, poems, paintings, even historical events, they all need an audience to exist and survive in time: so why do we treat who or what tries to get into public's souls in a natural, spontaneous way as a zero, considered that public would do right the same, just because he/it chose a different way to do it? I know lots of singers, writers, painters and what else who might not be technically as good as D'Annunzio and Monet, but that, personally, I like so much more.
It's all about tastes, always, as it is for all the things of life, but because the idea of subjectivity don't die we need the alternative to resist, we need a World in which it is always possible to choose between this and that, not one in which there is only and always someone else doing it for us. Or, even worst, a World in which there's no chance to choose at all but only a oneway for every inch.
Freedom is, above all, right that: to be able to choose, to be entitled to claim that, in our opinion, Sinatra would have just painted Mozart'ass, that Warhol's reproductions and Lichtenstein's comics are a thousand times better than Caravaggio's Jesus Christ & C., that Baudelaire's got no chances at all comparative to Salinger. Free: we are and we are deeply into stay so.
And Beauty, in the first place, and feelings she gives us are among the most subjective things in the whole World. And as we are free to say if we find George Clooney attractive or not, we want it to be too in thinking and saying if we find "I Promessi Sposi" a masterpiece or just a bullshit.
"Things have changed. People don't just meet organically anymore. If I want to make myself more attractive to the opposite sex, I don't go get a new haircut: I update my profile. That's just how it is."
(From "He's Just Not That Into You")
And that's not all: as I mentioned before, nowadays quotes from Shakespeare rather than Wilde are increasingly rare. I myself have often started my posts here writing quotes from many different TV series or posted lyrics and music videos to express my several moods. Yes, because the truth is that if you are not really into talk or write about yourself, hiding behind phrases written by others and let them speak for yourself (or, even better, to tell you)...It is so bad easier. Perhaps coward, perhaps even absurd, but always easier. And it's good, because some of these sentences are not maybe written by Dorothy Parker, but they are equally wonderful indeed.
And today, after all, communication has become even this: to treat lyrics as if they were amazing poems, film scripts as if they were the greatest prose novels of the past. Frankly, I have always believed that "common" people (so, you know, a singer rather than a poet of the Romantic Age) were those closest to "common" mood and thought of all of us. I find myself much more easily in a dialogue from "Grey's Anatomy" or in Aerosmith's songs rather than in a Leopardi's poem. And I'm not afraid to tell it. And these are the reasons why I often choose to let them speak for me; often, you've got the feeling that a song just knows you so well, so deeply, more than how a real person who actually knows you is able to do, that you feel as you could have written it yourself. Or, better yet, that the singer wrote it just thinking about you. For you, only and exclusively for you. I love going to concerts and I've hated study poetry. I love prose but I rather a "real" book, "raw", "stark" and closer to me by Salinger than a novel by Manzoni. And, I repeat, I'm not afraid nor ashamed to tell it.
The methods of communication have changed as well as have changed (also and especially) its contents: I think to know both is fundamental, those belonging to the past and those produced by our present and imminent future, because only then you could choose and have a preference. I believe it is fair and important to study our past among school desks, but we should give more room to both present and future: I do not expect in a book of English literature to be included The Beatles' lyrics (well, maybe... Yes, I do.), but at least that it didn't stop at the first, remote, half of the 20th century as mine did.
Here's the truth: life changes, but, more often, we didn't together with her. We often stay anchored to our past that, however glorious might have been and still remain, it's always "past" and cannot be so badly integral part of the present, often choking, swallowing it. For example, I think school books are still too bourgeois in their dealing with very dated, courtly, complex topics: simplicity, however, is not always a bad thing. Sometimes communicate in a "popular" way, in its considered derogatory meaning, is the best way instead, the more pure and beautiful one to touch people's hearts. Yes, people: how can be actually negative the fact that someone or something wants directly talk to people? Books, poems, paintings, even historical events, they all need an audience to exist and survive in time: so why do we treat who or what tries to get into public's souls in a natural, spontaneous way as a zero, considered that public would do right the same, just because he/it chose a different way to do it? I know lots of singers, writers, painters and what else who might not be technically as good as D'Annunzio and Monet, but that, personally, I like so much more.
It's all about tastes, always, as it is for all the things of life, but because the idea of subjectivity don't die we need the alternative to resist, we need a World in which it is always possible to choose between this and that, not one in which there is only and always someone else doing it for us. Or, even worst, a World in which there's no chance to choose at all but only a oneway for every inch.
Freedom is, above all, right that: to be able to choose, to be entitled to claim that, in our opinion, Sinatra would have just painted Mozart'ass, that Warhol's reproductions and Lichtenstein's comics are a thousand times better than Caravaggio's Jesus Christ & C., that Baudelaire's got no chances at all comparative to Salinger. Free: we are and we are deeply into stay so.
And Beauty, in the first place, and feelings she gives us are among the most subjective things in the whole World. And as we are free to say if we find George Clooney attractive or not, we want it to be too in thinking and saying if we find "I Promessi Sposi" a masterpiece or just a bullshit.
"Things have changed. People don't just meet organically anymore. If I want to make myself more attractive to the opposite sex, I don't go get a new haircut: I update my profile. That's just how it is."
(From "He's Just Not That Into You")
Wednesday, December 9, 2009
How Many Times, How Many Lies
"As doctors, we're trained to be skeptical, because our patients lie to us all the time. The rule is: every patient is a liar until proven honest.
Lying is bad. Or so we are told constantly from birth. Honesty is the best policy, the truth shall set you free..."I chopped down the cherry tree!", whatever.
The fact is, lying is a necessity. We lie to ourselves because the truth, the truth freaking hurts. No matter how hard we try to ignore or deny it, eventually the lies fall away, whether we like it or not.
But here's the truth about the truth: it hurts. So we lie."
***
"Pain: it comes in all forms. The small twinge, a bit of soreness, the random pain that we live with everyday.
Then there is the kind of pain you just can't ignore, a level of pain so great that it blocks out everything else, makes the rest of your world fade away until all we can think about is how much we hurt, how we manage our pain is up to us. We anaesthetize, ride it out, embrace it, ignore it, and for some of us the best way to manage pain is to just push through it.
Pain: you just have to ride it out, hope it goes away on its own, hope the wound that caused it heals. There are no solutions, no easy answers. You just breathe deep and wait for it to subside. Most of the time pain can be managed, but sometimes the pain gets you when you least expect it, hits way below the belt and doesn't let up. Pain you just have to fight through, because the truth is you can't outrun it, and life always makes more."
(From "Grey's Anatomy")
I hate lies. I hate illusions. I hate hope.
I like George Washington and Benjamin Franklin too: "He that lives upon hope will die fasting."
I can't bare that, I have never been able to. I'm not able (not interested in learning it either) to manage something above which I don't, I can't, have control. I love certainties, to know all about something instead of knowing just half of its truth.
Truth. Yeah. Truth is something we are forced to live always with: we must accept that and sooner we do, better we do live.
I really cannot understand why people have been programmed to be able telling lies too. It's a bullshit, a mistake. A great one. And I love, I swear I do, deeply, people who not only always tell you the truth but also stop you from lying to yourself. Yeah, because *we* are, in the first place, the people we own the truth, even before own it to others. How can we actually be honest people to someone else if we are not even capable of being it with ourselves? We are big people, we must know how to deal with the tragic truth, no matter how ugly that can actually be: we can't really think, and, worst, be sure of it, that lies, illusions, hopes will protect us forever. How? How long? If you can't stand truth you can't stand life either. Because truth is a oneway to truly live, the one and only key to every door. It's the stairway through which we can really feel good, be fine.
Truth is the one and only escape from pain. It is not because it promises us a fast and painless way out: it is because only when we know everything there's to know we can really know what we are fighting against, our enemy, and, then, start our rehab. There's no sense at all in suffering for something which isn't real or that is just incomplete to our awareness.
I'm thankful to everyone who still believe in this apparently arcane practice called "truth". "The importance of being Earnest" is something some people have never known at all, some other have just forgot, leaving it back on their ways.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jhPAK8HjcPI
Lying is bad. Or so we are told constantly from birth. Honesty is the best policy, the truth shall set you free..."I chopped down the cherry tree!", whatever.
The fact is, lying is a necessity. We lie to ourselves because the truth, the truth freaking hurts. No matter how hard we try to ignore or deny it, eventually the lies fall away, whether we like it or not.
But here's the truth about the truth: it hurts. So we lie."
***
"Pain: it comes in all forms. The small twinge, a bit of soreness, the random pain that we live with everyday.
Then there is the kind of pain you just can't ignore, a level of pain so great that it blocks out everything else, makes the rest of your world fade away until all we can think about is how much we hurt, how we manage our pain is up to us. We anaesthetize, ride it out, embrace it, ignore it, and for some of us the best way to manage pain is to just push through it.
Pain: you just have to ride it out, hope it goes away on its own, hope the wound that caused it heals. There are no solutions, no easy answers. You just breathe deep and wait for it to subside. Most of the time pain can be managed, but sometimes the pain gets you when you least expect it, hits way below the belt and doesn't let up. Pain you just have to fight through, because the truth is you can't outrun it, and life always makes more."
(From "Grey's Anatomy")
I hate lies. I hate illusions. I hate hope.
I like George Washington and Benjamin Franklin too: "He that lives upon hope will die fasting."
I can't bare that, I have never been able to. I'm not able (not interested in learning it either) to manage something above which I don't, I can't, have control. I love certainties, to know all about something instead of knowing just half of its truth.
Truth. Yeah. Truth is something we are forced to live always with: we must accept that and sooner we do, better we do live.
I really cannot understand why people have been programmed to be able telling lies too. It's a bullshit, a mistake. A great one. And I love, I swear I do, deeply, people who not only always tell you the truth but also stop you from lying to yourself. Yeah, because *we* are, in the first place, the people we own the truth, even before own it to others. How can we actually be honest people to someone else if we are not even capable of being it with ourselves? We are big people, we must know how to deal with the tragic truth, no matter how ugly that can actually be: we can't really think, and, worst, be sure of it, that lies, illusions, hopes will protect us forever. How? How long? If you can't stand truth you can't stand life either. Because truth is a oneway to truly live, the one and only key to every door. It's the stairway through which we can really feel good, be fine.
Truth is the one and only escape from pain. It is not because it promises us a fast and painless way out: it is because only when we know everything there's to know we can really know what we are fighting against, our enemy, and, then, start our rehab. There's no sense at all in suffering for something which isn't real or that is just incomplete to our awareness.
I'm thankful to everyone who still believe in this apparently arcane practice called "truth". "The importance of being Earnest" is something some people have never known at all, some other have just forgot, leaving it back on their ways.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jhPAK8HjcPI
Thursday, December 3, 2009
Where The Streets Have No Name
http://www.aliceinwonderweb.com/index.php?q=image/view/101
You know you're from New York City when...
you live in "New Yawk", not New York;
you can get into a 4-hour argument about how to get from Columbus Circle to Battery Park at 3:30 on the Friday before a long weekend, but can't find Wisconsin on a map;
you think Central Park is "nature";
hookers and the homeless are invisible;
you've considered stabbing someone just for saying "The Big Apple";
the middle finger is a form of communication;
you believe that being able to swear at people in their own language makes you multi-lingual;
your door has more than three locks;
you consider eye contact an act of overt aggression;
she subway should never be called anything prissy like "the metro";
you think $7.00 to cross a bridge is a fair price;
you secretly envy cabbies for their driving skill;
you call an 8' x 10' plot of patchy grass a yard;
a slice of pizza is dinner at least once a week;
"mad" is an adverb;
being truly alone makes you nervous;
you don't notice sirens anymore;
you're suspicious of strangers who are actually nice to you;
you run when you see a flashing "Do Not Walk" sign at the intersection;
you're 35 years old and don't have a driver's license;
you're away from Home and you miss "real" pizza;
someone bumps into you and you check for your wallet;
you cringe at hearing people pronounce "Houston St." like the city in Texas;
film crews on your block annoy, not excite you;
you take a taxi to get to your health club to exercise;
America West of the Hudson is still theoretical to you;
going to Brooklyn is considered a "road trip";
you haven't heard the sound of true absolute silence since the 80s and, when you did, it terrified you;
you get upset that a cabbie is obeying all the rules of the road;
you don't even notice the nice lady walking down the road having a perfectly normal conversation with herself;
your local news is national news;
communicating with people on the road only takes one finger;
you order your dinner and have it delivered...from the place across the street;
you can tell a gunshot from a firecracker and not get scared, but when you go to the burbs you get scared of hearing a cricket;
you know the lights above the skyscrapers is the closest thing we have to stars;
rather than waiting safely on the sidewalk to cross the street, you wait inches away from speeding traffic waiting to cut through it;
when you are able to make a right turn at a red light...you think it's the best thing ever;
there is no "North" and "South": it's "Uptown" or "Downtown";
you have absolutely no concept of where "North" and "South" are and "East" or "West" is "Crosstown";
you know that a "regular" coffee is;
it's not "Manhattan": it's "The City";
and you expect everyone to know that;
you cross the street anywhere but on the corners and you yell at cars for not respecting your right to do it;
you return after ten years and the first foods you want are a "real pizza" and a "real bagel";
you can nap on the subway and never miss your stop;
the Deli guy gives you a straw with any beverage you buy, even if it's a beer;
your idea of personal space is no one actually standing on your toes;
you have never been to the Statue of Liberty or the Empire State Building;
the subway makes sense;
you measure distance in hours;
you know four seasons: almost Winter/cold, Winter, construction...and the oppressive heat and humidity of the Summer;
you can recite all the words to Frank Sinatra's "New York, New York";
you take the 9/11 attacks personally;
you have an anger management problem;
you have no patience for impatience;
you have no tolerance for incompetence;
you would elect Robert De Niro or Joe Pesci for Mayor;
you would elect Giuliani for President;
you feel superior over all people from other states and, more importantly, New Jersey;
you believe you are tougher then anybody else from out of state;
you say "how you doin'?";
you curse more than you should;
you have a big mouth;
you believe the lightest snowfall is an excuse to do nothing;
you pay $5 without blinking for a beer that cost the bar 28 cents;
you've gotten jaywalking down to an art form;
"yellow" means go faster;
you know you're not mean: everyone else is just a sissy;
hating New Jersey is a way of life;
you meet someone from Jersey and you ask: "what exit?";
you're genetically engineered to dislike everywhere except The City;
you may live, work or go to school in another state, but you are New Yorker for life;
The Bronx, Queens, Brooklyn and Staten Island are not "The City": that title is reserved exclusively for Manhattan;
you know that while Staten Island looks like it should belong to NJ, NY has it because they lost a coin toss many years ago.
You know you're from New York City when...
you live in "New Yawk", not New York;
you can get into a 4-hour argument about how to get from Columbus Circle to Battery Park at 3:30 on the Friday before a long weekend, but can't find Wisconsin on a map;
you think Central Park is "nature";
hookers and the homeless are invisible;
you've considered stabbing someone just for saying "The Big Apple";
the middle finger is a form of communication;
you believe that being able to swear at people in their own language makes you multi-lingual;
your door has more than three locks;
you consider eye contact an act of overt aggression;
she subway should never be called anything prissy like "the metro";
you think $7.00 to cross a bridge is a fair price;
you secretly envy cabbies for their driving skill;
you call an 8' x 10' plot of patchy grass a yard;
a slice of pizza is dinner at least once a week;
"mad" is an adverb;
being truly alone makes you nervous;
you don't notice sirens anymore;
you're suspicious of strangers who are actually nice to you;
you run when you see a flashing "Do Not Walk" sign at the intersection;
you're 35 years old and don't have a driver's license;
you're away from Home and you miss "real" pizza;
someone bumps into you and you check for your wallet;
you cringe at hearing people pronounce "Houston St." like the city in Texas;
film crews on your block annoy, not excite you;
you take a taxi to get to your health club to exercise;
America West of the Hudson is still theoretical to you;
going to Brooklyn is considered a "road trip";
you haven't heard the sound of true absolute silence since the 80s and, when you did, it terrified you;
you get upset that a cabbie is obeying all the rules of the road;
you don't even notice the nice lady walking down the road having a perfectly normal conversation with herself;
your local news is national news;
communicating with people on the road only takes one finger;
you order your dinner and have it delivered...from the place across the street;
you can tell a gunshot from a firecracker and not get scared, but when you go to the burbs you get scared of hearing a cricket;
you know the lights above the skyscrapers is the closest thing we have to stars;
rather than waiting safely on the sidewalk to cross the street, you wait inches away from speeding traffic waiting to cut through it;
when you are able to make a right turn at a red light...you think it's the best thing ever;
there is no "North" and "South": it's "Uptown" or "Downtown";
you have absolutely no concept of where "North" and "South" are and "East" or "West" is "Crosstown";
you know that a "regular" coffee is;
it's not "Manhattan": it's "The City";
and you expect everyone to know that;
you cross the street anywhere but on the corners and you yell at cars for not respecting your right to do it;
you return after ten years and the first foods you want are a "real pizza" and a "real bagel";
you can nap on the subway and never miss your stop;
the Deli guy gives you a straw with any beverage you buy, even if it's a beer;
your idea of personal space is no one actually standing on your toes;
you have never been to the Statue of Liberty or the Empire State Building;
the subway makes sense;
you measure distance in hours;
you know four seasons: almost Winter/cold, Winter, construction...and the oppressive heat and humidity of the Summer;
you can recite all the words to Frank Sinatra's "New York, New York";
you take the 9/11 attacks personally;
you have an anger management problem;
you have no patience for impatience;
you have no tolerance for incompetence;
you would elect Robert De Niro or Joe Pesci for Mayor;
you would elect Giuliani for President;
you feel superior over all people from other states and, more importantly, New Jersey;
you believe you are tougher then anybody else from out of state;
you say "how you doin'?";
you curse more than you should;
you have a big mouth;
you believe the lightest snowfall is an excuse to do nothing;
you pay $5 without blinking for a beer that cost the bar 28 cents;
you've gotten jaywalking down to an art form;
"yellow" means go faster;
you know you're not mean: everyone else is just a sissy;
hating New Jersey is a way of life;
you meet someone from Jersey and you ask: "what exit?";
you're genetically engineered to dislike everywhere except The City;
you may live, work or go to school in another state, but you are New Yorker for life;
The Bronx, Queens, Brooklyn and Staten Island are not "The City": that title is reserved exclusively for Manhattan;
you know that while Staten Island looks like it should belong to NJ, NY has it because they lost a coin toss many years ago.
Tuesday, December 1, 2009
Hedonism (Just Because You Feel Good)
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LLs-JP5FGAg
I hope you're feeling happy now,
I see you feel no pain at all, it seems,
I wonder what you're doin' now...?
I wonder if you think of me at all...?
Do you still play the same moves now?
Or are those special moods
for someone else?
I hope you're feeling happy now.
Just because you feel good
it doesn't make you right (oh no),
just because you feel good,
still want you here tonight.
Does laughter still discover you?
I see through all those smiles
that look so right.
Do you still have the same friends now,
to smoke away your
problems and your life?
Oh, how do you remember
me, the one that made
you laugh until you cried?
I hope you're feeling happy now.
Just because you feel good
it doesn't make you right (oh no),
just because you feel good,
still want you here tonight.
Just because you feel good
it doesn't make you right (oh no),
just because you feel good,
still want you here tonight.
I wonder what you're doing now...?
I hope you're feeling happy now.
I wonder what you're doing now...?
I hope you're feeling happy now.
("Hedonism (Just Because You Feel Good), Skunk Anansie, 1997)
I hope you're feeling happy now,
I see you feel no pain at all, it seems,
I wonder what you're doin' now...?
I wonder if you think of me at all...?
Do you still play the same moves now?
Or are those special moods
for someone else?
I hope you're feeling happy now.
Just because you feel good
it doesn't make you right (oh no),
just because you feel good,
still want you here tonight.
Does laughter still discover you?
I see through all those smiles
that look so right.
Do you still have the same friends now,
to smoke away your
problems and your life?
Oh, how do you remember
me, the one that made
you laugh until you cried?
I hope you're feeling happy now.
Just because you feel good
it doesn't make you right (oh no),
just because you feel good,
still want you here tonight.
Just because you feel good
it doesn't make you right (oh no),
just because you feel good,
still want you here tonight.
I wonder what you're doing now...?
I hope you're feeling happy now.
I wonder what you're doing now...?
I hope you're feeling happy now.
("Hedonism (Just Because You Feel Good), Skunk Anansie, 1997)
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