first post!

wooo, my first post!

The Velvet Underground By Julian Casablancas

When you listen to a classic-rock station today, why don't they play the Velvet Underground? Why is it always Boston and Led Zeppelin? And why are the Rolling Stones so much more popular than the Velvets? OK, I understand why the Stones are more popular. But there is also a part of me that has always felt that it should have been the other way around. The Velvet Underground were way ahead of their time. And their music was weird. But it also made so much sense to me. I couldn't believe this wasn't the most popular music ever made.

Listening to those four studio albums now is like reading a good book that takes place in a distant time. When I hear The Velvet Underground and Nico or Loaded, I feel like I'm in Andy Warhol's Factory in the 1960s or hanging out at Max's Kansas City. The way Lou Reed wrote and sang about drugs and sex, about the people around him -- it was so matter-of-fact. I believed every word of "Heroin." Reed could be romantic in the way he portrayed these crazy situations, but he was also intensely real. It was poetry and journalism.

A lot of people associate the Velvets with feedback and noise. White Light/White Heat is the kind of record you have to be in the mood for. You have to be in a shitty bar, in a really shitty mood. But the Velvets created some very beautiful music, too: "Sunday Morning," with John Cale's viola; "Candy Says"; "All Tomorrow's Parties" -- I can't imagine that song without Nico singing it, although I thought Maureen Tucker had a cool voice, as well as being a really cool drummer. She had a femininity. I thought she sounded hotter than Nico.

In the beginning, the Strokes definitely drew from the vibe of the Velvets. I listened to Loaded all the time when we started the band, while I was writing my first songs. For four solid months, it was just Loaded and this Beach Boys greatest-hits record, Made in the U.S.A. A lot of our guitar tones are based on what Reed and Sterling Morrison did.

I honestly wish we could have copied them more. We didn't come close enough. But that was cool, because it became more of our own thing. Which is something else I got from the Velvets. They taught me just to be myself.

                                                             -- By Julian Casablancas Posted Apr 15, 2004 12:00 AM

Warhol

I really want to hate him, but I can't. I've seen videos of him, and interviews, and I really want to hate him, but I can't. I have a burning desire to hate him, I really do, but i can't. From what I see, I think he's marvellous. He somehow represents a lot of the 'superficiality' surrounding the modern era, but with him, this superficiality isn't really superficiality, it's some sort of deepness and depth. Yet when a lot of people emulate, idolize or even show deep admiration for him, more often than not, it's superficiality. I think the only way to (truly) understand him and his work is not to show any kind of affection and admiration for him and his work, and to view them with a sceptical eye, as to understand the 'Warhol' behind the work.

Warhol and the Beats

I'm finding that there seems to be some kind of a similarity between the Beat Generation and Warhol. Both were somewhat alike in the sense that they had a different 'outlook on life' compared to the norm. They bought a different enthusiasm which society couldn't and wouldn't handle. Being so much within 'society' means that true expression and the chance to develop your own take on life never takes place. 'Society' forces everyone to adhere to everybody else, to be 'normal', and then claims this as 'freedom' and tells us of 'diversity' which exists in our society. The Beat Genration and Warhol existed quite seperate from society; allowing them to develop and nurture ideas and live in 'harmony'—in the sense that they could hold their own perspectives and ideas without the ideals and niceties of life being forced onto them by 'society'. You would say that the Beat Generation existed within the framework of society—a lot of what they did was together and within the boundaries of the 'norms' set by 'society'. But when explored, you discover they didn't. They partied and socialised not primarily for partying's sake, but to share and explore ideas, and look for new experiences by being with other people. Because they were very much aware of the aforementioned things, their whole intention was different, they were very much outside of 'society'. I guess this is also true in Warhol's case. You see, I don't think that the other people within Warhol's group had the same outlook or even the same ideas as Warhol himself, and I also think that the people around Warhol probably garnered an idea about him and what he was and what he was doing, but I somehow think they didn't really know him. Warhol somehow seems that he was very much his own, and no-one really understood him, and so he played along to peoples perceptions of whatever they thought of him.

the heart in the machine

Today I met up with my friend. Probably my closest friend and whom I consider to be my best friend, even though it's probably not reciprocated. For the first time in my entire life, I mean this without the cliché, I was able to express myself as closely and as well as I could, 'myself' being the inner thoughts which I'm never able to express. I did this without a care in the world what she would think, and do you know what? she had been reading about the kinds of things that have been on my mind as of lately and she was just as interested as I about the darker side of life, and we were both fascinated by morality and things like what makes one thing good and another evil. I guess it was also for the first time ever I was able to feel comfortable being myself around someone, without a care in the world how 'me' would be taken by somebody. I caught myself off guard, but I was too mentally exhausted to put on 'the cloak' and pretend everything was perfect. Instead I let the deepness and the depth of my thoughts flow and I felt relieved, totally relieved, that there was someone in my life that understood. Understood in a way that no-one in my life does.

deep sensations

There are mental experiences I experience which are almost orgasmic. If not more orgasmic than orgasmic. It's a great difficulty for me to explain to you what these deep sensations are or where they come from but I shall try to explain to you to the best of my ability about them.

These sensations I get are from imagining an ideal place, but the problem with this is that it's not always an 'ideal place', it's a combination of an ideal place where I imagine myself, and thoughts from my imagination when I was younger. You see, I've been a dreamer all my life, and I put my imagination right alongside the necessities of living in the present, and so when I was younger, just in the same way as I do now, I use to dream of ideal places where I would constantly escape to. These ideal places for me consisted of what I'd seen on television or more rarely places I'd been. Now that I'm all grown up, I still have a few of these ideal places, but also these deep sensations which make all the hair on my body (not many) stand on end. I get these sensations whenever I think of something I use to think of when I was smaller, but it doesn't work for everything. And these deep sensations have also replaced the 'ideal places' I visit in my imagination; when these 'ideal places' use to feel comforting before, now feel orgasmic. I think some of my past imaginings feel so deep in the present because there's a part of me, probably my idealistic part, which is rooted deep within me that has remained the same all throughout the life, and these deep imaginings of my younger self feel orgasmic because they somehow represent the purest of  thoughts which encapsulates my dreams.

As for the details of these imaginings, I will not reveal because I'm not prepared to deconstruct these thoughts and possibly lose my deep sensations.

polaroid experience

I've never had one of those polaroid moments where every one in the polaroid picture seems so happy and everything looks infinite, and the faded polaroid picture adds to the happiness.

My head tells me people are never as happy as they seem in pictures, and more so polaroids.

My heart still wants a faded polaroid picture.

This is me uncynically optimistic, and dare I say...........happy.

allowing happiness

Once every so often, in fact very rarely, I start feeling bad for myself, and I go as far as to pity myself. You see, on a normal day-to-day basis I don't allow myself to be 'happy' in the general sense and I tell myself that I am perfectly happy being the person I am with everything I feel and everything I do. I also tell myself that I do everything I do having reasoned and having thought about it in my head. On a regular basis, knowing full well of my arrogance, I scorn at people who make it their motive to be happy in life, the reasons for this probably call for another post and I shan't go in to it now. Concerning myself, I don't allow myself to be happy but what I aim at is contentment with my brain and with myself as a person, and whenever I am happy, I quickly dismantle being 'happy' by retreating within my head to my place of contentment. There are probably a couple of reasons for this - having analyzed myself and what I feel and how I feel it for a couple of years now. One of them is (I think) that I'm very afraid of showing what's inside me to other people, and I know I've mentioned this before in a previous post but I feel that people will not like the person I am inside. I just don't know why this is. But another reason why I'm afraid of being myself is that I'm not sure what is myself, in that I know that there's something inside, and i can see it because I'm myself, but I don't know how to express it or how it can be expressed, and so I don't know how to be around people other than to pretend. I also think I retreat whenever I'm happy because I think that we as people tend to only accept stuff as much as we think we deserve, and so I think I don't deserve to be happy, and there seems to be a perverse part of me that feels pleased when I'm not happy because then at least I know as a person that I am in touch with reality. Whenever I am happy, I tend to feel that I somehow become stupid to the status quo of things in my life, and to touch on the point in the previous sentence, it feels as if I lose in touch with the reality of my life.

Usually my posts are re-clarifying clarified thoughts from my brain, but my last few posts have been more exploratory and I'm increasingly trying to clarify un-clarified thoughts in my brain.

I think what I should takeaway from this post is that from time to time, and maybe even more often, I should let myself be happy and enjoy myself and get carried away, even if I may not be the person I can't express and if so, I should enjoy the happiness with my pseudo-self.

the perks of self-realization

I'm currently reading The Perks of Being a Wallflower and it's making me realize all the things that are wrong with myself. It doesn't feel so good. I wish I could disappear.