At around the age of 13, every male has his first meaningful erection.
All erections before the first meaningful one respected the dick’s innocence. But at 13, the human male’s brain releases a surge of wrathful hormones, spawning a horned demon that rises at cockcrow, dusk and obnoxiously random times in between, possessing its pubescent victim, who must learn to exercise and exorcise (jerk and bust) the evil out of himself, daily, forever.
A few minutes after this awesome metamorphosis, the male learns that his thumb and pointer finger serve as an effective vice on his dick. It feels so good, but it’s too easy. He scavenges the kitchen for tools to create the ultimate fuck-machine, into which he can thrust his virginal cock. Plastic bags, check, peanut butter, check, olive oil, check, rubber bands, check. He concocts a delicious lubricant, which he then pours into a plastic bag, which he then seals around his dick with two rubber bands. He slips his dick under his living room couch cushion, and after 5 minutes of doggy-style, stops, recalling the greater efficiency and practicality of his right hand. A framed photo of his mother on the mantle catches his eye; he shudders and pulls out of the plastic bag. He ventures to the bathroom to wash up, discovers an empty toilet paper roll on the surface of the trash can, thrusts… He’s spent the past three hours inventing new masturbation mechanisms. The demon licks its lips.
And inevitably within the next few days, the 13-year-old searches “sex blowjobs titties babes” on Google. In his life, the modern man probably spends more time watching internet porn than having sex. I remember when my dad sat me down in my bedroom and gave me the birds and bees speech: “Ben, listen….”; hours before that, I had been lounging in front of my friend Eric’s laptop in his dusty Bob Marley-themed attic watching a guy shove a wine glass up a woman’s ass with his erect penis, on a pirate ship. The shover and the victim traded groans and “Arrrr”’s as the glass vanished into an abyss of shit.
“Oh yeah, baby! Push it harder, baby!”
The common man’s sex life lexicon (sexicon) is infested with crude porn-star zingers like that: “Lemme see that pussy” and, “Oh yeah, baby, fuck me like that.” When your new boyfriend gets you in bed and his demon starts breathing up your thigh, don’t be alarmed when he mumbles such obscenities. It’s the porn talking. If this is his first time getting laid in a while, he will be comparing the sex he’s having now with pornos he’s watched within the week, the same pornos that teach little 13-year-old boys how to seduce their best friend’s moms, drill holes into public bathroom stall dividers, fuck balloons, sheep, butts, and sheep butts, the same pornos that your drooling grandpa watches to satisfy his thirst for 18-year-old “virgin pussy.”
Men are pigs. But it’s not our fault.
Some Serious Questions:
1. If you’re unconscious more often than you’re conscious, are your dreams more real than “rEaLiTy”? Which leads to the real question: If you spend more time watching internet porn than having sex, won’t sex be pretty unreal when you’re actually having it?
2. Do gigolos/prostitutes crave porn like we crave sex?
Trains whooshed past us on either side, and the subway stopped screaming for a minute. Ahhhhh. The last train’s distant screech faded into an ethereal chord, slipping through our teeth as we gulped for silence. We looked at each other wide-eyed, and without a word, Ben turned around and led us on a brisk hunt for the music.
We drifted through a light breeze of guitar sounds, the tones growing louder and louder every step, until we laid eyes on the source of the cool: an old black man, his black beret and black sunglasses so cool, a cigarette dangling from his lips, so cool, the way his lower half sat perched on a crate and his upper half grooved with his axe, so cool, playing beautiful inversions of unknown chords, so cool, really funky, hot rhythm, dirty licks, real soul, invading mine. A cool invasion. I kept smiling at him, and once, he looked up from his fretboard and smiled back; as we turned to walk away (gotta catch the train, gotta be somewhere, gotta maintain schedule!), he stopped playing, stood up, and shouted at us, “YEAH! YEAAAAAAAAAAH!” like he’d just caught the winning pass in the super bowl. Mmmmmmmmmm, I feel you baby! He felt us, and we felt him. So cool.
I decided to spend the entire bus ride home from New York (four-and-a-half hours) thinking. I started thinking about sex, but then I caught myself and started thinking about rock ‘n’ roll.
Let’s break it down, ya’ll. The noisy subway======>relatively bad mood. Soulful music=======>spiritual experience and happiness. Mr. Cool turned my day around with his music, his emotions!
A couple kept making out in the row in front of me, so I closed my eyes. I imagined emotion as a ball of energy–every human’s got one. Then, I poured a can of gas on that energy ball, lit a match, and WHOOSH–that shit is flaming. So our emotions are flaming balls of energy, in our stomachs (just how I imagined it). Emotion is energy. Happiness is one emotion, sadness another–but these are just manifestations of the energy. If we can recognize sadness as just a manifestation of this flaming ball of energy, we will realize that sadness is temporary and beautiful. The really cool (potentially pretty uncool) thing about flames is that they spread. We can spread our flaming balls of energy; we can make other people angry with our anger. My arch-nemesis from high school Olivia Homan might say to me, “Hey asshole! Haven’t seen you in a few days, but that’s okay, because you’re ugly!” That makes me angry (am I ugly though?). Some people, like Mr. Cool, release this flaming ball through art. Mr. Cool’s musical expression sparked a new flame in my ball of energy. It’s a beautiful power we humans have, but it can be dangerous. We gotta become aware of this energy, harness it, and release it at the right times, at the right places, and through the right means. If you direct anger at someone who doesn’t deserve it, that anger becomes part of their energy. That is bad! Peace and love can be ubiquitous if we all start to view and handle our emotions with this is mind: we are connected. We are one! I feel what you feel! This flaming ball of energy is real, man. <3
To believe or not to believe? That is the mothafuckin’ question!
For the past four summers, I’ve worked at a camp with little kids who want to believe. I’ve realized my responsibility to not only let them believe but make them. And if they think it’s stupid later, then–hey!–at least they experienced believing for a while. I’ve learned so much from being around kids, and I just wanna share a couple camp anecdotes with you. I hope I’m not coming off as egocentric in my writing.
One day a couple summers ago in snorkeling class, my co-instructor Dale and I respectfully deviated from the class agenda, which just consisted of a bunch of check-mark boxes on a soggy sheet of paper anyway, by constructing a lounge leagues beneath the lake’s surface, complete with a plasma TV with surround sound, a really comfy couch with pillows everywhere, unlimited junk food, a cute little puppy, and a giant trampoline (the American Dream, under the sea); we called it Vito’s lounge. Vito was the camp’s maintenance director at the time. Try imagining Vito–is he short, stocky, bald, and mustached? You got it! We rounded up all our little snorkelers (ranging from around 8-11 years old) and told them all about the lounge.
“Listen guys. Today is kind of an off day for me and Dale. We’re gonna go hang out in Vito’s lounge while you guys snorkel.”
“What’s Vito’s lounge?”
“Oh! You’ve never heard of Vitooooo’s Looounge? Who are YOU?”
“I wanna know! I wanna know! I wanna…”
We all swam to the middle of the lake, and then Dale and I dove “100 feet down” to “Vito’s lounge” to “feed Vito’s puppy. You guys gotta see this puppy. Cutest puppy ever.” These kids totally believed in Vito’s lounge! They wanted to come with me and Dale so badly to hang out, but we told them it was too deep and too treacherous a journey. ”It’s not worth the risk. You can hang out there when you’re older.”
Dale and I kept on diving and surfacing with new and exciting stories. One time, Vito’s lounge was burning down and we had to dive down multiple times to put out the fire. We couldn’t do it alone. The kids had to collect as many muscles as possible to throw on the flames, because that was the only way to put out a fire under water. Isn’t believing beautiful? A child’s fantasy and religion both foster the comfort of knowing there’s something to look forward to later. Those kids couldn’t wait until their legs were buff enough to kick 100 feet down to Vito’s lounge.
This past summer, four twelve year old girls from Manhattan had a collective crush on me. It felt great! Every day, they’d run up to me and give me hugs or gifts (once they gave me a feathered guitar pick they made in Arts and Crafts…awwww), and they would always ask me if I would take them unicorn hunting. I wasn’t positive if they really believed in unicorns or if they just wanted to be alone with me in the woods, but one day I decided to go with their flow.
“You guys need to stop asking if I’ll take you unicorn hunting.”
Silence. ”Why?”
“You don’t know how dangerous they are.” I walked away, my head in my hands.
Ha! They were terrified! A few nights later, a few of the oldest male campers and I knocked on their cabin door and whispered through the screen, “Let’s go. Now!” The guys and I were draped in hunter’s regalia (sheets); we’d smothered our faces with mud; I held in my right hand a unicorn staff that I’d found, miraculously, in the costume room. We spent about an hour sprinting through the woods hunting for unicorns. ”Quiet!” ”Watch out!” ”I think I see one over…there!” What a rush!
To believe or not to believe?
Believing is beautiful; camp taught me that. I used to believe in a crippled psycho killer named Crazy Dan, who, according to legend, shot a child, ran from the scene, and accidentally locked himself in an icebox (located behind Cabin 8A), where he still moans and groans. If you listen hard, you can sometimes hear him moaning late at night. That’s what Dick McKnight, the old camp director, used to say. I’ve heard Dick tell the story at least fifteen times. At the end, he always says: “You know–I don’t believe in ghost stories. But every year, people tell me they hear moaning.” Gives me the chills every time. Brought tears to my eyes last summer, when he came to visit.
I still believe in the story of Crazy Dan, just like my 20-year-old friend Zach believes in Santa Claus. Maybe someday Zach will catch big ol’ Santa sneaking down his chimney. Is the anticipation greater than the realization? That is the mothafuckin’ question!
Music’s existence depends on the presence of both a sender and a receiver. Someone needs to create the music and someone needs to listen to it. The absence of a receiver means the absence of music. I can strum a guitar alone in a room, but that makes me both the sender and receiver. But if nobody’s there to interpret the music, then the music doesn’t exist. With no emotional response elicited, there is no music. The receiver’s response to the music is the only important thing, then, because that’s what makes music music. Feel free to disagree, because I might have no idea what’s going on.
One person listens to Miley Cyrus and feels a certain emotion. This person’s life experiences have led him or her to love Miley Cyrus, as opposed to John Coltrane. This person can’t stand John Coltrane.
Another person listens to John Coltrane and feels the same emotion. This person’s life experiences have led him or her to love John Coltrane, but not Miley Cyrus. This person can’t stand Miley Cyrus.
It doesn’t matter–at all–the quality, the expertise, the sincerity of a musician. All that matters is how the receiver interprets the music. If Miley Cyrus’s music elicits the same kind of emotion in one person as John Coltrane does in another, then it’s impossible to say that one is better than the other. My life experiences have led me to become accustomed to jazz, to understand and relate to that kind of music more than any other kind. I love John Coltrane, and Miley Cyrus is good, but I just can’t sit down and listen to her for an hour. My opinions, though, are my opinions.
It’s so easy to be a music snob. Nobody understands how I listen to Coltrane! Maybe not. But shit–I don’t understand how Mimi listens to Miley Cyrus. The musician doesn’t decide the greatness of the music. The listener does. So obvious, but I never understood til now.
Expression means freedom; complacency with silence means living in shackles.
Humans have the ability to say, “fuck it!” to the latter path. It’s just a lot harder. It’s difficult to harness serious thoughts and emotions and use them.
My thoughts need more room than my head allows. I want a pasture with infinite green–space. In a big old pasture, all my thoughts eventually settle in the right places.
(flowing, hard to distinguish the beginning of a measure, 10/4 meter, blending, “everything in its right place”)
Sometimes, my brain neurons move so fast I experience a thought-induced high. All sensations are rushed. I’m typing right now, and the act seems frantic, though I know my fingers are moving slowly. This state comes about randomly. I’m in it now and am trying to articulate it for the first time. Everything is going so fast. I check my heartbeat. It’s the same as normal, I know, but it’s going faster than ever in my mind. I’m self conscious about the loudness of my actions; is the noise from my typing waking up my parents? I’m horny, energetic and it’s 4 in the fucking morning. Can’t stop thinking. Faster. Can’t stop thinking. FASTER. Can’t stop. Ahhhhhhhhhhh! Thoughts collide in my head, crashing against my skull–headache–my thoughts are too excited, each one so important. CHAOS. I imagine my mind as a pasture; my thoughts have space to roam, to find places to hang out, keep still, pop a beer, relax. Let go….
I try breaking through the “limits” of my mind so my thoughts have more room to flow. Before, my thought molecules were hot and menacing, because my deflated mind confined them. I need them to be more liquid, flowing, and FREE. Thoughts still pop in on me, but I don’t dwell on them. They are distanced from each other. Not as hot and flighty. Writing in this blog helps me realize the pasture; expressing helps me break free from my mind. It’s not natural to push thoughts away completely, I realize. You can’t delete a thought. And would you really want to? My thoughts define me. Even the bad ones. Even the “I wanna fuck that hot chick” thought defines me. It just needs to find its place in the pasture so I don’t have to dwell on it all the time. Or maybe I just have to cut my dick off.
I have a friend who is just beginning to express some serious shit, some thoughts and emotions that have been bouncing around in her head for her entire life. I want to listen so bad so as to offer her a pasture. Her thoughts and emotions flow from her to me, “Jupiter” to “Everything in its Right Place.” Expressing yourself to another person bridges the gap between self and self, creating a greater mind. Flighty thoughts find an outlet and finally just hang out, relieved. That’s music. That’s art. UHHHHHHH. Sharing emotions, donating them to the greatest pasture, one that will eventually contain the contents of all minds, making one MASSIVE, compassionate mind (see Isaac Asimov’s story below). I feel less alone when I play or listen to music; same goes for when I’m talking to a friend. I feel connected with an artist, my band, my friends, my family, the world. My friend Noah says he’ll never fully understand what it’s like to be black, but Tupac’s music is getting him damn close.
The oneness of life. Ah.
Isaac Asimov: Re-Creating the Big Bang
…Isaac Asimov has conjectured how intelligent beings might react to the final death of the universe. In “The Last Question,”Asimov asks the ancient question of whether the universe must inevitably die, and what will happen to all intelligent life when we reach Doomsday. Asimov, however, assumes that the universe will die in ice, rather than in fire, as the stars cease to burn hydrogen and temperatures plummet to absolute zero.
The story begins in the year 2061, when a colossal computer has solved the earth’s energy problems by designing a massive solar satellite in space that can beam the sun’s energy back to earth. The AC (analog computer) is so large and advanced that its technicians have only the vaguest idea of how it operates. On a $5 bet, two drunken technicians ask the computer whether the sun’s eventual death can be avoided or, for that matter, whether the universe must inevitably die. After quietly mulling over this question, the AC responds: INSUFFICIENT DATA FOR MEANINGFUL ANSWER.
Centuries into the future, the AC has solved the problem of hyper-space travel, and humans begin colonizing thousands of star systems. The AC is so large that it occupies several hundred square miles on each planet and so complex that it maintains and services itself. A young family is rocketing through hyperspace, unerringly guided by the AC, in search of a new star system to colonize. When the father casually mentions that the stars must eventually die, the children become hysterical. ”Don’t let the stars die,” plead the children. To calm the children, he asks the AC if entropy can be reversed. ”See,” reassures the father, reading the AC’s response, the AC can solve everything. He comforts them by saying, “It will take care of everything when the time comes, so don’t worry.” He never tells the children that the AC actually prints out: INSUFFICIENT DATA FOR A MEANINGFUL ANSWER.
Thousands of years into the future, the Galaxy itself has been colonized. The AC has solved the problem of immortality and harnesses the energy of the Galaxy, but must find new galaxies for colonization. The AC is so complex that it is long past the point where anyone understands how it works. It continually redesigns and improves its own circuits. Two members of the Galactic Council, each hundreds of years old, debate the urgent question of finding new galactic energy sources, and wonder if the universe itself is running down. Can entropy be reversed? they ask. The AC responds: INSUFFICIENT DATA FOR A MEANINGFUL ANSWER.
Millions of years into the future, humanity has spread across the uncountable galaxies of the universe. The AC has solved the problem of releasing the mind from the body, and human minds are free to explore the vastness of millions of galaxies, with their bodies safely stored on some long forgotten planet. Two minds accidentally meet each other in outer space, and casually wonder where among the uncountable galaxies humans originated. The AC, which is now so large that most of it has to be housed in hyperspace, responds by instantly transporting them to an obscure galaxy. They are disappointed. The galaxy is so ordinary, like millions of other galaxies, and the original star has long since died. The two minds become anxious because billions of stars in the heavens are slowly meeting the same fate. The two minds ask, can the death of the universe itself be avoided? From hyperspace, the AC responds: INSUFFICIENT DATA FOR A MEANINGFUL ANSWER.
Billions of years into the future, humanity consists of a trillion, trillion, trillion immortal bodies, each cared for by automatons. Humanity’s collective mind, which is free to roam anywhere in the universe at will, eventually fuses into a single mind, which in turn fuses with the AC itself. It no longer makes sense to ask what the AC is made of, or where in hyperspace it really is. ”The universe is dying,” thinks Man, collectively. One by one, as the stars and galaxies cease to generate energy, temperatures throughout the universe approach absolute zero. Man desperately asks if the cold and darkness slowly engulfing the galaxies mean its eventual death. From hyperspace, the AC answers: INSUFFICIENT DATA FOR A MEANINGFUL ANSWER.
When Man asks the AC to collect the necessary data, it responds: I WILL DO SO. I HAVE BEEN DOING SO FOR A HUNDRED BILLION YEARS. MY PREDECESSORS HAVE BEEN ASKED THIS QUESTION MANY TIMES. ALL THE DATA I HAVE REMAINS INSUFFICIENT.
A timeless interval passes, and the universe has finally reached its ultimate death. From hyperspace, the AC spends an eternity collecting data and contemplating the final question. At last, the AC discovers the solution, even though there is no longer anyone to give the answer. The AC carefully formulates a program, and then begins the process of reversing Chaos. It collects cold, interstellar gas, brings together the dead stars, until a gigantic ball is created.
Then, when its labors are done, from hyperspace the AC thunders: LET THERE BE LIGHT!
And last night’s love-making session turns out to be a dream. Fuck. I sit up in my bed, contemplate whether or not life is worth it, seriously consider sleeping a few more hours, remember that I’m paying a lot of money for college, and slip into yesterday’s pants. I suppress an erection, tightening my belt another notch; I wish I could just get rid of my dick for a day. No time for that, gotta go to class. My Professor wants us to do well on the exam. We won’t do well if we don’t do it this way. If we do it this way, we’ll get this many points off, but we have to remember to include this and this in our essay or else we’re just going to fail that section of the exam and the exam is worth half our grade and I just wanna fuck that girl in the row ahead of me, man she’s cute, but shit, she’d never want me, oh man my mind is disgusting, oh man I wish I could just get rid of this dick, oh man I wish I had a girlfriend and I gotta pass this fucking exam, because this exam is really important, gotta pass, gotta graduate, gotta support myself, gotta support a family, gotta study hard. Who am I? I leave the lecture hall, fast, and stand outside of Bascom Hall for one minute, weighing the pros and cons of going to my Livestock Production lecture. The Cons win, as usual. I walk home, wondering why I’m in college. There’s no internet at our house, so I lug all my shit to Fairtrade Coffee. I open my laptop, check my email, check my facebook, open a book, can’t concentrate, back on facebook, scrolling through photos of people I don’t know. One of the photos loads really slow, giving me time to realize how fucking creepy I am. I rush my cursor to the red “x” at the top left of my page and shudder. I reach into my backpack for a book about Zen. I want to meditate more. I spend the next few hours at home, eating, thinking, street pulse, music, girls, home, lost friends, examining my state of mind, sitting, friends and relationships, feeling guilty about never doing school work, avoiding. I hope I can get into the J-school, but my grades this semester are bad. Did I blow it? Am I wasting my time sulking about how I blew it? Should I be thinking about how I can fix my grades? I take a nap, and the attention goes back to my dick. I wake up, disappointed, another naked woman just in my head, and I stare at a book for a while. The words don’t make sense. I think I have ADD, and man, I’m hungry. I sit, trying to let go of my self, trying not to think. Ahhhhhh. I get high, and am able to let go of my attachment to thoughts and ideas. The illusion is gone. I realize what it means to be compassionate but can’t articulate it. All I can say is “whoaaaa man, this is awesome.” I am high. Fuck. My phone alarm vibrates, and I take one minute to clear my mind. Trivial thoughts bounce off each other, and I let them go. I count to 10 several times, focusing on my breathing and my posture. My mind is clear, and I can sleep.
What’d you think about? Powdered wigs? Some corny film score? A million symphonies that all sound the same? Gotta nap now? Great, influential music, but not your scene? Poland, Germany, France? White people? Rich white people? Rich old white people? Rich old pretentious white people? Rich old pretentious white people with violin prodigy daughters?
No wonder so many people hate classical music.
I have epiphanies sometimes, and then I spit them out here, on this website, for you to read, uh.
I went to the UW Symphony Orchestra concert last night and, midway through Edward Elgar’s Symphony No. 1, realized I had never listened to classical music the way I oughta be: with an empty mind, free of preconceptions and expectations. Every time I’d listened to classical music, I’d listened to classical music, as opposed to music. So during the symphony, I decided to press my “delete bullshit” button, erasing all preexisting knowledge of classical music and the obnoxious culture surrounding it, and I started actually listening. I noticed textures in the music; it was breathing! My mind was free! The harmonies and shifts in dynamic slapped me across the fuckin face, turned me on! With my arrogance buried, my innocence was resurrected! I was appreciating classical music like I’d never known it existed! It was music! It was alive! No LSD involved!
My ability to understand the music came from willingness to first admit I didn’t understand it. If I said, “Man–classical music is X” before listening to the symphony, then X would undermine my listening experience. But in saying, “Man–I am just going to listen,” I knocked down that barrier of preconceptions, making my listening experience more pure.
Not just with music, though! With EVERYTHING! If I were to approach a homeless dude and say to him, “I know all about your struggles, but you gotta get off that whiskey,” then I wouldn’t learn anything. On the other hand, if I went up to him and said, “I’m here to listen,” then I would learn everything. Same thing with any acquaintance, whether it be a “Coastie” or a “Bro” or a “Hipster”! If I were to step into my shower and only the cold water worked, I could say: “Fuck!” Or, I could say: “What do I know about cold showers? Nothing.” Then, that cold shower, which would normally be miserable because of my bias toward hot showers, might be refreshing.
My sister tries to listen to music without considering its historical context. I told her last year that I thought it was so important to know and be able to relate to the origins of the music your listening to. She disagreed, but never really told me why. Black people in Chicago, fed up with racism, created bebop. Charlie Parker, Dizzy Gillespie, Miles Davis all said: “Fuck the white man!” How could I listen to jazz without realizing these emotions? Well, I still think it’s important to know the historical context of the music your listening to; but no matter what, the music listening experience will be purer if you forget it all. I think.
Kevin, Lauren, Ben Fox and I were on a post-dinner expedition to Cap Centre Market a few weeks ago, talking about that hip shit we talk about, when all of a sudden Kevin hopped on and off a parked car’s hood. It all lasted just two seconds. No one said anything, and we all kept laughing and talking.
But I can’t stop thinking about Kevin’s stunt. I mean, Kevin’s no goody-two-shoes, but I just wasn’t expecting him to hop on that car! Every other time we’d gone to the store, we’d made it there without one of us jumping on a car! How refreshing that Kevin decided to jump on the car that one time!
Kevin taught me to never walk to the grocery story the same way.
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