last night ps and i set out to go to a new french restaurant in town, la jardinaire. a few friends had recommended it, with a coy hint to an out of the ordinary experience. it was a pleasant autumn night - berkeley allows itself fallen leaves and brisk breezes - so we decided to walk. ps and i were in a bit of a mood. joyful, daring, delirious. like teenagers on pot. we set out into the world laughing and stumbling, going to get us food.

the address was an odd one, on a residential street. we arrived at an ambiguous building, quite unlike a home or a business, somewhere in between, inviting awning bewitched by glass door, concrete walls adorned with deep wood mailbox and private small plants. we entered, up a staircase, and arrived on a dark and uninviting landing. the lights were out, the door before us unmarked and shut. it seemed that the restaurant was closed.

my mind registered a touch of disappointment. we looked at each other silently, our night suddenly unhinged. and then we clicked and turned to the door, just to be sure.

the door opened into a dark hallway.

"i don't think anyone's here?"
"well the door's open"

ps started to walk through, and i followed.

we found ourselves in a home. there was nothing restaurant about it; it had all the trapping of a modest family home. but it was the right address.

to our left was a kitchen. in the kitchen we found a large silver refrigerator. the food inside was magnificent - fancy bacon, endive and leeks, marinades in exotic bottles. also several cheeses that we couldnt name. a lidded glass bowl of homemade hummus. in many ways, this was the food you always hope to find in a strange refrigerator.

ps went into the living room and starting pounding out "claire de lune" on a small church organ, banging his head like he was a a rock star. he was really happy that we had found all this amazing food, and that we were going to have our restaurant experience after all.

me, i wasnt so sure. part of me felt like we had made a mistake: that we were in someone else's private home, and were about to burglar their food. it seemed wrong, mean.

but ps was so happy. this night couldnt have turned out any other way. the universe is all for us.

i went to the refrigerator and pulled out the cheese, first thing. there was a leather couch i was looking forward to sitting down on. i prepared the food while ps continued his recital, now picking out some angular talking heads melody. we didnt talk; we had mastered the evening, and we didnt put words on it.

to the right of the front door was a long hallway into darkness which we had been neglecting. a few times already we had heard noises from down there, metallic nosies, but we had ignored them.

but now a man cam running out from the hall. he was a fat italian looking man wearing a red one piece long thermal. he looked like luigi from super mario bros 2. he had a black wooden bat in his hand. he started yelling at us, spittle flying from his mouth. his violence was immense.

ps and i started to scream as the man approached us, shaking the bat. he was blocking our way back to the front door. i didnt think very hard; i threw the plate of cheese straight up, with the idea of creating a diversion. amazingly, it worked, to some extent; the man looked up at the airborne cheese. ps and i ran straight at him, hoping to squeak by his sides. at this moment, my vision is very sharp.

ps like a star quarterback pulls a fake and gets by on his left side. im not as agile; he swings as i pass him and i smell bourbon, then he gets me on the shoulder, hard. i barely feel it though; we are at the door and racing down the stairs, leaping them five at a time. we spill out onto the street and continue bolting, not looking back.

we ran about five blocks and collapsed in front of a parked ice cream truck.

anyway, we got away. we rolled onto our backs, breathless, and laughed at the moon. it was fine. but the next morning, my shoulder hurt so fucking bad. something went wrong.

i remember in school, in third grade, mrs sikon gave us the classic following directions test: the directions tell you to put your name on the paper, then read the whole thing carefully, then at the end it says now turn in the paper with just your name on it. ie you werent supposed to do the questions, because the directions told you just to read them.

this is a piece of shit test that teaches conformity and blind adherence, and belittles ones ability to draw conclusions.

last night i went to see the HOTTEST SHOW ON BROADWAY, spring awakening. it was pretty great, though the second act seemed strangely non-existent. microphone rock dancing, teens pounding their boots on the floor, working really hard, very exciting. the mics are a nice touch...especially when the guys put them back in their breast coat pocket when they are done. though one cant help but notice that the voices are mysteriously miced even off mic. hm, blech.

the much hyped sex scene is certainly exciting and dangerous- thank god broadway is taking chances like that, a furious blinding grope on a teen breast. even more dangerous is the girl duet hard rocker about child abuse, which just fucked with me in so many ways...these two teen girls are singing about what happens to them at night, while behind them the 30ish white male drummer is rocking out. just totally joyously obliviously rocking out. whoa. (while talking about the band here, ill also note that i have a monster crush on the uncredited, im guessing sub, pianist/conductor {uncredited unless her name is adam} the way she would duck down and groove, very hot. call me!)

one thing thats been really scaring me lately is the idea of genius decay...the late works of artists getting worse and worse. miles's 80s-90s studio albums are a fucking joke; paul mccarteny is recording for starbucks. what the fuck? cant they hear any more? the gradual blindness into mediocrity, its a scary thing, and i fear the day it happens to me. i already have the seeds of it, i know: the artistic blind spot, that moment that in retrospect is just so obviously terrible and yet cannot be seen at the time of creation. spring awakening has two of them...the first are the absurdly horrible schoolteachers, complete with funny, overpronounced german names, facial ticks, and most horrendously the single moment of "lets party" dancing during "totally fucked" that we all saw 20 years ago in a hundred teen comedies, the crusty old dean finally cracking a move at the final jubilee. are you fucking kidding me? when so much else in the show was so real, do we really need the adults to be trite, totally unbelievable caricatures? do you really need that cheap laugh so badly?

worse for me though was the act two homosexual seduction scene, which is played strictly for laughs. after such a tender and true, awkward and terrifying hetero dance in the first act, to go to cheap "im like a pussycat, i skim off the cream" land, with two again caricature voices, is just fucking insulting.

cmon! if youre gonna go for it, FUCKING GO FOR IT. actually much of the show seemed to play this uncomfortable dance, lodging it in this strange netherworld where parts took bold chances and rocked, while other elements felt like halfbaked concessions to an earlier broadway, one of overacted hilarity and euphemistic broadness to gloss the unease. one can imagine the agehardened producer trying to inject some lightness, something familiar into the show. or maybe the creative team had their own issues with bipolar pussiness. who knows.

its just so weird to me; how can someone (myself included) create something so very very good and yet have such egregious lapses? is it because we see too much, or not enough? i guess i know the answer to this...theres not just the forest, not just the trees, theres the roots, the incredible complex system of inspiration and thought that bubbles underneath, that looms so blindingly large in the artists mind but that the audience never sees. id like to take this blog out with one of my trademark "new hyperplatitudes", but am now plagued with doubts that those are artistically poor. and even more plagued by how exactly the phrase "forest for the trees" maps out metaphorically. too plagued to continue.

dude i love matthew dear!

after rehearsal thursday night we went out for a drink at showmans, on w.125th in harlem. there was a hammond organ on stage, which alone caused me enough excitement to overlook the 2 $9 drink minimum; the band started playing some perfectly capable standards, and the waitress brought us our drinks, double jamesons all around (i just learned that ones choice of irish whiskey is a political statement. though my choice honestly has less to do with politics than with a mother-inflicted soft spot for a good rebel song), and free hot dogs, made on a foreman grill in the corner.
so were chatting along finely, when im startled by a new crystalline sound; and i look up at the stage to see that there is now a tap dancer, an old old black man in white pants and a loose bowling shirt, with a knowing gleam smile on his face, and his legs and arms unstrung puppet loose. its really, really wonderful tap dancing, cause hes dancing with his face too, all the tiny expressions of joy and surprise, like a balinese dancer. and his taps are a good three octaves higher than any taps ive ever heard, giving the whole thing a decidedly fantasy oz feel. weve all stopped talking and are mesmerized by this man with id guess 50 years of experience at his art, and im marveling about that; the new unknown to me realm of synthesis and confidence that comes with age. artistic wisdom, unwavering.

he heads towards the edge of the stage, and im disappointed that the tapping is about to end, but instead, as soon as he leaves the stage a young japanese guy in a long black shirt takes his place. his taps are at the usual octave, and his dancing is quite different; a little stylish and aloof, but still quite good. he does most of his dance with his back to the audience though, which annoys me and sends my attention drifting...so im surveying the audience and hear two guys talking, the one saying "im not going after you"...and then i look down at their feet, and see shiny shiny shoes. and in fact i look all round us and see that theres over a dozen people sitting near the stage in suspicious shoes; and it dawns on me that somehow weve stumbled into a tap dance open mic night. holy shit.

what was amazing to me was how varied each dancers style was. heres a pretty limited palette, basically just rhythm and dynamics, but each of the 14 or so dancers we saw (all, by the way, taking two choruses of an unending "its always you"; one can only imagine what the organist was thinking after a half hour of this) was quite distinct; some swung threes and some shuffled fours, some reveled in the silences, some pyroed their way through each beat. it was so much more then just "this guy was fast and loud, this guy slow and soft"; instead these amazing personalities on their faces were somehow translated directly into strings of sixteenth notes. one young guy in dreads and patent leather boots (boots!) teetered on the edge of losing the beat the whole time, acrobatic polyrhythms never acknowledging the one but nevertheless staying convincingly grooved. there were two women, one a silent film star pinwheeling but always abbreviating, the other fiesty firecracking in a too short skirt. the other japanese guy was strangely effeminate but for his charlie chaplin moustache, and his tapping was from another time and place, like a termite picnic. one super old guy milking the silences absurd. two out of place and slightly apologetic white indie kids nevertheless shuffling just right. an old old cowboy, white hair and a studded shirt, messy but firm. then the wizard got back up, his shoes again jingling high above reality, took a interim chorus, and then they traded fours. then like five of them got up and tapped all at once, tap tap tap! to take it out.

the wizard said thank you, thank you, and come on back and bring your shoes, we do this every thursday.

personalitys a wonderful thing to see in someones feet.

i have the sniffles.

so clown bible closed, this week i put finishing touches on the recordings, they are lovely and the cast and band is just absolutely astounding...so many little touches that i never would have thought of. zappa calls adding these touches "putting the eyebrows on"...and these songs are bushy bushy with them. what a delight.

so the show itself, pretty overwhelming feedback to the tune of the ending being too serious/unclown/avantgarde opera/reverent. its true, its true...it was a beautiful ending to a completely different play. however, the charge that ive had the most fun picking at is "too reverent"...one piece of feedback said "i thought we had agreed to be skeptics for the evening"; a good friend said he was surprised by the reverence because he "knows mg and i"; another email feedbacker wrote "i still came away from your show with a message similar to that of conventional Christianity: The Old Testament is burdensome law and the New Testament is forgiveness and renewal. I don't think you intended that."

didnt i? yes the play was too serious at the end, but too reverent? what i find funny here is the classic old reversal of conformity and revolution...that liberals watching a piece on the bible created by liberals are expecting to have their own educated, higher tier "religion is bullshit" beliefs confirmed- expecting us to conform to the revolution. now some of this is because of an expectation we set up earlier in the show...i think our old testament god veered too far to lampooning at times, setting up an expectation of no holds barred irreverence. but i think theres something deeper at work here, this "enlightened skepticism" that actually creates just as much of a dogmatic wall as anything else. "i will not sit hear and listen to someone blasphemy my blasphemous beliefs!" etc.

heres the dirty little secret- i got no problem with christ, as hes presented in the gospels. none. i think hes beautiful, and i think every little crazy word of christ's is just jawdroppingly awesome. this is not a religious belief at all..i got no interest in finding a personal savior, and i am not a believer in anything so literal as christainaity, but storywise, storywise i think jesus's shit is fucking great...confusing and fierce and demanding and so real, so knee scraping visceral. and the things he says, his advocacy of asceticism and compassion, really fucking fierce let them beat you up compassion, his eyeplucking out solutions to the problems of desire, its all to me so clearly the answer, and so incredibly fucking difficult to do. i like my spiritual paths strict and crazy. aesthetically, just aesthetically you understand...i love my wine women and song too much to follow any road to enlightenment, for now i can just delight in the idea of it, the promise of it, and live another few lifetimes suffering in the sensual.

so yeah, if im gonna write a play about christ, its gonna be reverent. i revere him. not to say that i dont wanna have some fun with him...theres already a new tune in my head about jesus learning about his new human body: "ill betcha jesus cant dance, oh no oh no"...but belittle him, play the exhausting petty game of pointing out the contradictions? ugh. some skeptical knowledge of how these texts were actually written informs me here...believing that this is not the word of god but instead accounts written by imperfect observers and passed down over centuries lets me not worry so much about the odd line...and actually the strangeness, the incoherence is where i find so much of the compelling in christ, the baffling fig tree burnings and sword brandishing. fuck yeah, bring it, you imperfect man you!

it just exhausts me here that people cant seem to to make the next jump, the next big leap after cynicism...everyones so fucking extreme, either its the word of god or its a laughable piece of shit. cmon, cmon, back here in the center, im sittin in the center of town, at the top of a big beautiful marble lion and siren fountain, and you can see absofuckinglutely everything from here.
everything!
come the fuck on!

i have the sneaking suspicion that as a lyricist, no one knows what the fuck im talking about. and this is because i, as a music listener, sometimes go YEARS without hearing the lyrics of a song.

today on a rainy bike path ride into albany, a mist of drizzle slowly but steadily covering my face with a fine film of running-to-the-altar-too-late rain, built to spill's "you were right" came on:

You were wrong when you said,
Everything's gonna be alright.
You were right when you said,
You can't always get what you want.
You were right when you said,
It's a hard rain's gonna fall.
You were right when you said,
We're still running against the wind,
And life goes on after the thrill of living is gone.
You were right when you said,
This is the end.

Do you ever think about it?
Do you ever think about it?
Do you ever think about it?
Do you ever think about it?

god i do! i do think about! but all of the sudden, all of the sudden. i had never really heard those "jack & diane" lyrics until this mornings ride made me discover them...because in hearing them in the built to spill song, i recognized them but couldnt place them, and so got to play the hilarious game of trying to remember one song while listening to another, all while still riding in this romantic rain. eventually, it snapped in, oh mr cougar of course, and then suddenly i really heard it>

life goes on, long after the thrill of living is gone.

thats beautiful!
and so sad!

and true, and wonderful, and clever, especially the wordplay of the two meanings of "to live".
and i have sung along to this song for years, it was a childhood favorite when it came out (with all the cool picture frames bubbling in and out in the video...and cougars freezeframed punch!) but i never thought about what he was saying..i just let the delight of the syllables alone fuel my love for the song.

and ive had this experience several times, the sudden revelation of whats actually being said. theres some people that this doesnt happen with...like dylan, im listening to dylans lyrics the first time through, cause ive just been conditioned to know that thats what to listen for. but then a hall & oates song comes on and for all i know im singing along to the words of mein kampf.

sometimes i get it...ive been an advocate of billy joel actually having some pretty amazing insights into human loneliness and insecurity for a long time ("the stranger", "shes always a woman", and especially "an innocent man"), once i got really mad at my dad because he asked me if i knew what the lyrics to "born in the usa" were about (this is when it came out, 1984). i was irritated by the question and in a smart ass mood (yeah, i was 8) so i said "life liberty and the american way"...to which he laughed and then with my sister started to make fun of me because of course the song is in many ways about the exact opposite, its a fucking cynical song. but i knew that! that was the thing, i had actually gotten that, even at 8, but was just being a smart ass. but my reputation as a close listener was smashed. oh well. dad, lara, i forgive you.

but then much of the rest of time, yeah.
and so when i write songs, why should i expect any more of my audience than i can actually give?
especially in a theatrical setting, where you get to hear it once, just once?
words are hard, hard to hear.
do you ever think about it? do you get it, do you get it?

oh, i gotta go dry my hair.

totally, totally fucking stuck writing the first song of clown bible. no fucking (good) ideas except for this really obnoxious jump jazz line that keeps running through my head, "well i love this god of mine", a squirrel nut zippers anthem. hot hot. but is that the musical i want to write? is that the opening i want?

good musical openings:
the music man (best ever. all rhythmic talk. on a train. yeah.)
west side story (10 minute instrumnetal overture? good.)
miss saigon (fast minor 9 chords and that sense of backstage urgency. good.)
fiddler (lays it all out. plus like twelve great melodies in a row.)
oklahoma (oh, klahoma!)
cabaret (trilingual, nice 6 chords)
chorus line (that insistent jazz chord vamp, god i hope i get it? mm!)
guys and dolls (nice fugue, male voices. though its not a fugue, its a round. thats always pissed me off)


in the middle
jesus christ superstar (its just that first line..."my mind is clearer now'...totally starting the show in the middle of a psychological epiphany. thats cool.)


bad musical openings:
cats (kill me)
all the ones that just start with some mild boring song. which is a surprising ton: sound of music, my fair lady...eh surely something else. wait, i dont even remember how my fair lady starts. why cant the english? hm.

well this hasnt helped. the thing is, its clowns, were all clowns, and how do clowns sing? its a hard queston. clown training has been pretty eye open amazing; ive got a lot of freinds who have done the physical theater school thing, and they all went on about how clown training is the most intense theater traning there is. its not about bending balloons. its not about polka dots. the true clown, the classic clown, is serious business: man at his most exposed, vulnerable, innocent. all the world against him and yet he perserveres in spite of/through his foolishness. an open heart, the holy fool. the holy fool again! the unnumbered card, outside the deck.

honestly a lot of the training seems real similar to buddhist meditation training to me. theres a lot of stop the mind, stop doing things, stop performing and just BE. mind wants to tick tick tick and when you let it youre not so beautiful up there!
you can really see it, you can. you can see when someone is not seeing. when they are thinking too much...

the mind running is not so beautiful as the heart beating is.

za told me once about some college basketball coach of hers who viewed coaching as a meditative art, because he was mindless while doing it. lost in the moment. i can dig that...i can dig that my best piano playing happens when i turn it all off too. i dont know where my clown is headed...i feel like ive got my mind off and i can be real honest and true, but whats going to happen when i have to start doing things? its one thing to look someone clean in the eye and see them and be seen, but its another to do that while palming an egg. and another to do it while singing...what a non self conscious thing singing so often is!

but: friday night went to see some lovely georgian singing groups. the trio of men, what an example in performance they were: two of them smiling, and moving their heads with the music, and indicating, and gesturing. subtle, but there. and a bit fake. not that they werent really feeling it, but that insistence on letting us know...this is actually an issue for me, this trust, you have to trust that the audience will get it, you dont have to show them. trust, they are smart and deep. they are...they are? they are. not smart, thats not even the point, its instinctual, theyll know, if youre honest theyll know and feel it with their gut. no mind, just nerves. you cant let someone know that youre seducing them until theyre already seduced. you have to trust thatll happen.

the first two didnt trust it. they were fine, and certainly wonderful singers, but they faked it a little. and maybe people liked them. but for me, it was the third, ah the third.

he stood,
he sang.
thats all.
and he was beautiful.

stand and sing, its the heart not the mind.

i want this first song to be all that, effortless and vulnerable and beautiful exposed joy and terror in the face of god, all of the human heart staring deep into the void and letting us see that fear and wonder.
and also with a good backbeat so we can have some cartwheeling.

ok i have an idea!!!!!!

how many times do i have to open and unopen these goddamn newly painted windows!!
when they gonna stop sticking?
aw god, god damn!!!

first a note: i am not a computer video game geek. im actually a super cool artist type who "doesnt watch tv" etc. thats what makes this post funny. cuz:

two nights ago i cancelled my subscription to world of warcraft, leaving my level 60 human warlock, vistilio (along with a bunch of alts still in their teens, liltuvi, a gnome rogue, ohbabybaby, a night elf druid, and my favorite towards the end, a hot hot undead warrior named zabbitz) leaving him abandoned with a bank full of unused mooncloth and just one quest shy of his already paid for epic mount, the dreadsteed.

now, ive had some serious problems with video game addiction in my past. atari's river raid, kaboom and megamania, nintendos super mario (of course), tetris, simons quest and zelda 1 and 2. zelda in particular really grabbed me, there was just so much beauty and love in the design, i really cared, you know? freshman year dorm in college there was mortal kombat everywhere, i favored baraka and his fierce blades. then there was a really bad marathon of playing the star wars trilogy for SNES; this is when i actually played straight for 24+ hours, beating one game and moving on to the next, all not even in my room, jg being patient and understanding, sleeping, waking, going off to journalism class while i oblivious to him died yet again at the hands of the mechanical eye outside of jabba's palace. (which wtf, he certainly wasnt that tough in the movie!)

after that i tried to stay away, not get near the ubersystems that started coming out around 97-98, playstation and xbox. my college housemates and i did have an atari which we enjoyed, but in a casual, kitschy way (m*a*s*h was a surprising favorite, you actually performed surgery). and, we had the ultra fast ms pac man machine in the basement of the student center, the only ms pac man machine i have ever found, ever, (to this day ever!) where both ms pac man and the ghosts were reprogrammed to be scary fast. making getting to the banana board a fucking real achievement, and scores over 80000 near impossible (as opposed to the ubiquitous fast ms/slow ghost consoles in which 6 digit scores are laughably easy). we played this a lot, jem jgl and i, and my god it was really fun. the camaraderie was the best, the vocabulary we developed, the total sharing of experience as we watched each other get through a particularily tight run. this is important...it was the friendship that was great. i played alone a lot, sure, but even then i could go home and tell stories, new high scores, "oh my god i went right through pinky today!" i can still remember jem excitedly telling us about the existence of a fourth board, just about blew our fucking minds. also fun (and related to i guess what happens in the olympics etc all the time) is how once one of us passed some high hurdle (ie a new board, a new high score) the other two would follow quicky in stride...three weeks of trying to top 70000, and then all of us do it on the same day, that kind of thing. cause all the sudden getting 70000 was out there in the world, in the collective experience, so we all had access. weird and lovely.

anyway, the summer after college i tested my relationship with jj while playing the SNES zelda game, her roommate had left the system lying around. then i went to grad school and hated it so went out and bought a N64 just to play zelda's ocarina of time; in fact played it so much that i started neglecting my test grading duties, and when called out on it i actually told the professor that i had graded the papers quickly/sloppily because of zelda. man, that was a really great conversation.

id also like to point out here that the scene in that game where link leaves his home village, and he and his childhood friend, a cute girl named saria, say goodbye to each other, not kissing but so clearly in love, made me cry.

there was some serious pinball playing going on around this time too, but i put that in a different category. oh man lost in the zone!

upon moving to sf i decided enough, this will not be my life, the jocks playing madden ugh, and i have lived without a system ever since. there have been a few small lapses on the pc, including some weird game where you shot these heads onto the celing? cgk? and then a week nursing a lovesick heart over halo 2 at tenredhen's house, whoo. but mostly ive been clean for 8 years.

now: several of my friends here in sf started playing world of warcraft (wow) in the last year...about 5 of my oldest sf friends, the group ive had the most intense history with, my burning man crew, etc. it got to the point where in hanging out with them, they would just talk about wow and id be left on the outside. and they were always tempting me, and i always said no, cause i know ive got problems. then one of them went and sent me a 10 day free trial, right after i finished up two shows and had a bunch of free time. and so bam. i hit level 20 in about four days, found out that the free trial didnt let you go past 20, logged off and pulled out my credit card. and i was done for.

leveling through the game is really, really fun. i mean the world is just fucking huge and so damn well designed; theres always something new, every two levels you get wicked new spells, there are long and intricate quests with neato rewards (as a warlock the biggest things for me were acquiring my new demons every 10 levels: a fire throwing imp, a heavy damage taking giant blue thing called the voidwalker, a sexy succubus decked out in full bondage gear with the power to seduce humanoids into a lovesick paralysis, and an odd magic eating creature known as the felhunter) and you are playing online with real people, real friends. tb and i have similar (ie near nonexistent) work schedules, so we were staying up til 5-6am every night, he in sf, me in berkeley, miles apart yet running wild through this vast fantasy world together, making jokes in the odd language of chat, rofl-ing while running through forests with dozens of plagues bears chasing us. there some pretty hilarious stuff you can do. and its really weirdly wonderful, to see a friend translated into this virtual form...the way tb would move his character was so him, the fidgets and odd emotes, the sudden slaying of an innocent lvl 1 rabbit, the total lapses and unexplained afk's (away from keyboard). early on i spent a beautiful beautiful night running through unknown lands with tb and his wife, an ex of mine; its been years since ive felt that close to either of them, running madly up and down the beach of the zoram strand, a giant moon in the sky, slaying naga. the art design is stunning, yeah. and just so many other moments of being really nice connected with these friends that i dont really see that often...being led through gnomeregan by a seasoned jk, getting pieces of cloth in the mail from mieshra so i could up my first aid skill. once tb sent me some rum (a completley unfunctional item in the game) after we had finally defeated a team of hard to kill orcs in stonewatch keep. and oh endless stranglethorn vale! good times, ah good times. and there was personal, alone joy too, beating giraffes with my fists in the barrens, stumbling across the goblin mirage raceway for the first time at 5am...

and i cant even begin to talk about the bizarre role playing aspect of the whole thing; like am i controlling vistilio, or am i vistilio? a suspicously buddhist question! watching the watcher...but this aspect makes the art really visceral, man you are in it, this is art is happening to you in a far more direct way than any other art form i can think of. thats right, art. fuck you.

anyway, thats not the point. though i think you can see how amazingly geeky and insular this can get. the point is, about two weeks ago i finally hit level 60, the highest level you can reach in the game, late one night killing stealthed tigers in winterspring. leveling is so fun and so addictive, cause theres that real sense of accomplishment every time you level up...a big shiny aura comes down on you, theres a cool sound, all your stats go up, and people nearby say "grats". its called "dinging", so when you do it, you can say "ding!" i was really hoping that something amazing would happen at hitting 60, but sadly it was the same as all the rest...

so, after 60 the game becomes quite different. gone is the finite game of leveling; in its place are a variety of other far more time consuming options. you can run 5 man dungeons, you can play in player vs player battlegrounds, you can go on 40 man raids to kill ridiculously difficult creatures. all of these options have the same goal though: gear. getting better and better gear. there is so much gear in the game, and the super super best stuff is stuff that drops like 0.01% of the time off of some crazy impossible to kill monster that a 40man group can only attempt to kill once a week or so. and only one drops, so all 40 people have to then negotiate over it. so yeah, to get like the best possible set of warlock gear, the kickass tier 3 plagueheart set, could take years. literally. and by then the expansion will come out and there will be a tier 4...

so there i am at level 60. most of your options as a solo lvl 60 player involve highly repititous slayings. ie you can work on your reputation with various factions, kill like 1000 of some creature and then this vendor will sell you a really cool belt. stuff like that. kill a bunch of stuff so you can get better gear so that you can kill more stuff so that you can get better gear. etc. not so fun, really. most high end content is aimed at the large groups, specifically the 40 man raid. now i can see the beauty in this, the team work if youre close with a group of really dedicated players...but unfortunately my social awkwardness actually translates into the MMORPG world as well (who knew?) i only had one experience in a 40 man group, killing a dragon near azshara, and man it was just too geeky for me. raids use vent, a software app that allows you to talk and listen to everyone rather then chat...and hearing these people just GEEKING OUT, man, and some obviously pre-pubescent..it was a bit much. im still cool, after all.

and theres this other aspect, subtle yet disturbing to me, but of all these people gathering together to defeat a game that has been made by another person? like, youre not defeating something real, youre defeating something that has been specificlaly designed by another human being just like you in such a way that it can be defeated. you know? your success is ultimately guaranteed. right?

outside of these 40 man raids, you can group with people and run 5 man dungeons, no vent so less geek. this is mostly what i did at 60, trying to make gold to get my epic mount (a fast demon horse), at least that was some kind of tangible goal. and i had a couple nice moments, a priest named seviana was very nice to me and i developed a bit of a crush on her ("i cant believe that was your first scholomance, you did so well!" *blush*)...but more often the strangers were bad, bad players and worse communicators, rushing into monsters before everyone was ready, like im at 0 mana and this asshole warrior goes and charges a group of plagued hatchlings, christ. and then the bickering over things, and the posturing, and the endless talk of gear and crits...ugh.

anyway, yeah, the game just started being depressing. no point, no goals, no friends, no way to win. i mean, yes theres still the joy of gameplay, and raiding would certainly offer more new...but the goals, where were the goals> what was the point? so i found myself getting depressed, in the game itself. now, its been a bad few months for me, the game really sucking away at me, my sleep schedule erractic and my drive in creative and social pursuits really diminished. i actually bailed (and didnt call, just watched the minutes tick by and saw the phone and... !) on a good friend one night cause i was playing (funnily she was actually the first of the original group to cancel her account, for similar depression-causing reasons. so she was pretty understanding), ive neglected another kind of cracked relationship with another good friend, i havent made any new music in months, havent really pursued any dates, stopped going to the gym. and when i wasnt playing, i was thinking about it. yeah, its bad. but at least while playing the game initially i was jazzed, so excited to get to that next level, so happy after a long night of questing to say goodnight to tb and know id see him again tomorrow.

but now, post 60, it just all started to feel...meaningless. no clear goals. tb and i stopped playing together as much, as he got bored with his 60 and started leveling his alts, all of which are at levels that i have no characters at, so playing together isnt so possible. and leveling alts, to me that just seems boring. ive already done it! it was a little fun to roll an undead charcter, totally new lands, plus they can feed themsleves by cannibalizing the corpses of their enemies, whee, but still there was that lack of initial newness, the 60 goal. the goal. id already done it. and lord i cant imagine spending another week in my 30's in stranglethorn, good god. so i stayed with my 60...but the goals, i missed the goals!

>the game started being like everyday life. boring, routine, no great rewards.<

ie like i had chores to do in the game, selling things at the auction house, managing my bank account, making mooncloth bags. and then when id go out to do things it would be just things id already done, with no real point other than just doing them. like im just trying to make a bunch of gold so i can get a horse that goes faster? and where will i go so fast? or im saving for a necklace that boosts my stamina by 10? and what will i kill with these extra hit points? no goal, no goal! a free for all..and so easy when free to lose all focus and just be a wanderer. and i kept trying, i played some pvp battlegrounds and got yelled at by some more skilled players, lord that was also depressing. recreation is supposed to be a break from this petty minutiae of human interaction, right? but no, it was there, so much of it, bickering and posturing over chat windows, and all about nothing, nothing. what i want out of a game is an escape from life, not a replication.

i talked about this with some of my guildmates, the ones who have been playing for a year+...and the conversations were very odd, like they were offering advice on what i could do to keep myself busy, what options there were, "oh you could level an alt, or you could take on a different profession, you could work on your reputation..." it was just like in life, when youre bored in life and so decide to take up knitting.
but this wasnt life! if its boring, i dont have to play!

so i quit.

now an expansion comes out in january, allowing you to progress to level 70, and yes ill probably rejoin just to get there and feel that old thrill again. and my outside life will suffer, but then the bells and whistles will stop, and ill get out. and hopefully something new in the real world will be there...

sadly this is not a heroic story of me overcoming an addiction. its just that the addiction got boring to me. which interstingly seems to be my pattern for all addictions, drugs and music and women. "flavor of the month" an ex told me i am, and that one stays in my head. scary.

its been a nice few days, back in the real world all the way. i saw a baby at a party the other day, and the mom was talking about how thats her new obsession...and yeah, i liked that. i really liked that. now theres one i think i could stick with.
always changing! always love!

ah someday.

just had kind of an amazing train ride;;;;
after great meeting with cast of current show, where everyone talked open and out there and sincere and no animosity just this love of the work, and we all drinking manhattans and martinis in a fancy hotel bar in the outer tenderloin, and a few cereal boxes stolen from the kitchen and then pipes were lit, and a security guard came but we worked it out, ah the actors we are, we flattered and redirected, ah beautiful........

after all this, on the train, was thinking about the mixtape of all music ever that ends the show...and yes its got a western slant, but thats the fucking audience, and my own personal experiments have shown that my western ear gravitates toward the western; if you listen with nonwestern ear you hear strange strings and drums constant, the piece is just dripping with nonwestern. here:

mixtape.m4a

i like it! but sure, its slanted, but thats fine with me, i am my audience.

but the point is not that: the point is, in tribute, one sample on the mixtape is from dj dangermouse/jay-z/the beatles the grey album ("99 problems", of course, so the best song on the album. hit me!)

it came on dj random on bart tonight, and listening to it, i realized something really obvious about the album that i just hadnt gotten...its the beatles WHITE album and jay-z's BLACK album. and the corresponding artists are racially WHITE and BLACK. so okay, right?> and how perfect? the beatles being just sooooo white, really the kings of white pop, this is what all white music aspires too...and to my small white mind jay-z being equivalently super-black hiphop, at the polar end of how black music can be; hiphop, and slightly gangsta underground at that...how BLACK...

and at the root of dangermouses genius is fusing these two, and finding fundamental this basic ground; they are both good music, so so good, and they interact, they are the same. they are the same in their goodness...and what a gift for me, an "enlightened" whitepop man with no black hiphop friends, walking in that liberal racial shadow zone of theoretically open yet practically nonexistent. like i just dont interact with black hiphop people at all, theres just none in my whitepop circles. my fundamental racial fear, is, as im sure a million pieces of literature have gone on about (and i dont know this literature, its outside my scope) is in the difference, the apparently overwhelming surface differences between my whitepopself and hiphopblack. basic, nothing new, we know this. and intellectually i understand the surface and the deep, that were all human and we feel the same things in spite of radiclaly different social mannerisms, a way of talking and seeing and interacting just so amazing different to me, as i watch dave chappelles block party in my cozy white berkeley living room and wonder, god why doesnt my culture listen like that, talk like that, dance like that? all that extroverted joy. but i have that joy, im the same, somehow, right? sure, sure, i guess, but im unconvinced...and in my whiteness feel like i cant even really talk about this, right? god its so fucked, i just stay away...(in fact ive had this post written for 3 months and havent published it yet, hm).

but then to hear that sameness, through music, not explained, but expressed through music.
yeah, that joy, that fundamental joy, i can hear it in jay-z's voice and in george harrisons guitar, i can, i can i can.
okay okay, thanks again music, thanks.