Free Association

I feel like I want to cry. Not because I'm happy, and not because I'm necessarily sad, either. I've just experienced a random assortment of events this week, both good and bad, leading up to this small existential crisis, and now I just want to cry, as if there's some great beauty in the world right now that I want to recognize physically but can only experience spiritually. I'm listening to this song off the new Clap Your Hands Say Yeah album over and over. It's called "Goodbye To Mother And The Cove" and it makes me want to cry, too, even before the moment I wanted to cry. I've actually been listening to it all week, and every time I hear it this infinite, beautiful sadness washes over me and I all want to is sob because it reminds me of people I love and war and the fair and drowning all at the same time, and it's all ugly and sad and true and heartbreaking and makes me want to go swim at an amusement park and of course I can never fucking cry. When I first logged onto the Internet I saw that some ex-Olympian just survived a plane crash and it made me think of the song. And then I remembered that it's the third tragic sports story in three days I've seen on my homepage. Some player for the Broncos (I think) randomly died, and some other football player's dad died, as well. I'm not sure how the death of a celebrity's father can be "news" unless the father was famous, of course, too, and so I'm not sure what that says about our culture when we're reduced to reporting on the tragedies of athlete's extended families when the families themselves are arguably not famous at all. But then I remember that time that Michael Jordon's dad died and that was all over the news, but then again, he was Michael Fucking Jordan, only the most famous person on the planet at that moment, so that's understandable. I wonder which celebrity is the most famous on the planet right this very moment and what would happen if his or her dad died. My mind is wanting to say Beyonce (I wish I could give her name that little accent) but I feel like that can't be true. But I still think it's a pretty good guess. Maybe Britney Spears? Or is she too crazy now? I'm still debating if surviving a plane crash qualifies as something tragic, or happy, or beautiful, or something beyond all those things. Maybe if other people died it would be tragic. I didn't read the article. But that's something I should do more of, and I should also probably change my homepage. Read more, that is, I should do more of that. And keep in touch with current events other than music blogs. I should go to the gym, too. I've realized this week that I'm having an existential crisis for the fact, among other things, that I have too much free time on my hands this semester, so going to the gym is probably a good thing. I also would like to learn how to play the drums, but I have this secret fantasy where I start a band the summer before senior year and we play one shitty gig at some shitty coffee house on Franklin Street before we graduate. Only 5 people are there - 4 are our friends and the other person is some old lady who's too drunk to leave - and we never perform again because we are so terrible. But the only people I know to start a band with are all fucking drummers, and you can't have band of all fucking drummers, so I should probably learn something like guitar or bass. Actually, I was listening to David Bowie's "Rebel, Rebel" in the car tonight and I realized what incredible instrumentals are on that song so maybe guitar wouldn't be that bad. After that song was over I was at Jaki's watching the Oscars, and after that was over I was listening to "Heroes" and "The Departed" had just won and I was thinking how happy and nice and perfect everything was and all I wanted to was cry but I couldn't. So that was my night. And now I'm thinking about plane crashes and drowning and the fair. A short story I'm writing currently starts out with this guy on a flight imagining what it would be like if his plane crashed in the middle of fucking suburbia and destroyed all these plastic lives and families, and whether that would be some horrible tragedy or some beautiful awakening for these people because in tragedy we find beauty, and since their lives were so fucking robotic and only externally perfect that maybe this horrible fucking wake up call would show them something better and positively change their lives. Or maybe it would just fuck them up forever and kill everybody. So it's completely weird and random right now that I'm thinking the same shit as this short story and now I'm reading (kind of) this story about athletes and plane crashes and I'm having an existential crisis because I feel so fucking stagnant and all I want to do is cry a beautiful cry and direct a beautiful play and change the world. I'm going to start going to the gym and writing more and learning some cool skill like juggling, and that's that.