It's like a rollercoaster-ride

this great mystery called "life" isn't it? And I mean that in both directions. Sometimes, like myself lately, you might feel down, rock-bottom down actually, and then fate, or whatever you want to call it suddenly jolts you back up and you find yourself being happy again. Which does not last forever obviously, the fall back down always comes eventually, but it's nice to be reminded that it's usually followed by a ride back up. And well, ultimately everything evens itself out anyway. I have already discussed this though so I won't repeat that today. I am as usually writing completely at random and hoping that something interesting appears here so that I can meet the (almost-)weekly deadline I have set for myself. Deadlines are actually something I thoroughly despise and always try to somehow postpone or get around, making me somewhat pissed at myself for having set one here. But if I don't do this regularly I notice that it gets harder and harder to write creatively and even spell correctly, which impairs my ability to go on working on my novel that now already consists of almost 9000 words, and I am really eager to write as much as I can for it seeing as I really enjoy creating the protagonists life on the edge. Maybe I'll post a little sneak-preview of it here at some point to get your opinion on it and, well, to share it of course. But not today. I want to have a little more material to choose from prior to deciding what part of it to excerpt and feature here. So I will once again just stick to writing something that's hopefully entertaining for you guys. Or at least something that makes you think about things, but you all know the drill by now. Which leaves me at an impasse because I am not really thinking a whole lot at the moment, I am simply basking in the happiness that has suddenly been catapulted back into my life. I mean there is a lot going on, there's trouble brewing all around the world, which I know because I am now following every source of news imaginable on Twitter and installed two News-apps on my smartphone. That idea came to me, as you can probably imagine, whilst reading a Hunter S. Thompson book. And also because I have lately been feeling like I should work towards a profession where I would actually make money with my writing, in whatever form that may be.

And according to "wordcounter.net" the above introductory paragraph was exactly 420 words long. Isn't that awesome? I mean that that just randomly happened so close to 4/20 is just fucking amazing. It actually made me smile just now. But anyway, there will be another post around that day concerning itself with mankind's favorite plant. Probably. Today however I will be ranting about something that has drawn my into a vicious circle of being pissed about it over and over again. That something is namely my inability to write lately. And by that I don't mean that I'm suffering from "Writers block" or something similar, no I mean that I do not have the fucking time. My social circle here has expanded beyond my wildest dreams meaning that if I'm not at university I am somewhere else hanging with friends or spending time with my girlfriend, both of which lead to me being home late and exhausted, ergo unable to produce as much as a god damned predicate. Which just saddens me because I would love to spend as much time on creating sentences and paragraphs as possible. But alas, reality and its many responsibilities are always lurking behind the next corner, ambushing me whenever they see fit, and thereby preventing any kind of creative process from happening. Even now I am very limited in my time, hastily typing these words on my smartphone whilst waiting at my institution for higher education for an exam to finish so that I can go home. Not alone though mind you, which means that this entry will not be continued until late afternoon today or worst-case scenario even tomorrow morning. That would be terrible, especially after announcing this post to be appearing "within the next few days" on Facebook. What a blunt error on my part. Making promises that will probably not be holdable after all. I am however trying my best to hold them, which is why I am using these few minutes of spare time to write this. 
Being a highly social animal it is getting increasingly hard to find such moments of tranquility though. It's not only my misanthropic side speaking here; I genuinely believe that albeit longing for social recognition and interaction even us humans need a fucking break for one another from time to time. By which I do not want to demean the value of any time spent with people close to myself. Or complain about the amount of time that was spent. All I am saying is that it is essential for people to be by themselves occasionally, especially when creating art of any kind or when dealing with emotional extremes. In latter case having others around may be helpful to some, I agree, but personally I would much rather discharge myself emotionally on my own prior to talking to others and sharing my feelings. But maybe that's just me. 

Hm. The above paragraph derailed kind of quickly from "inability to write" to "breaks from social interaction". Well I guess the topics are pretty heavily interlinked after all as outlined above. If there were more of those breaks my ability to write would 'rise' again. But then again social interaction is mostly not as bad as it used to be for me. Of course there are lots of things I still find insanely annoying about it that make me want to quit society and live on a small island on my own, but all in all it's gotten better I think. Although I have to admit that my perception of the world is once again tainted in rose by the recent uplift that fate (or whatever) has given my life, meaning that that might also be the reason for me thinking that interacting with humans is not as bad as usually lately. Which is not negative per se, but just something to keep in mind whilst reading this. I was in an entirely different mood when I wrote the last entry for example. Which is pretty obvious actually. But well, as the title suggests that's how life goes. And isn't it fucking annoying that I keep coming to that conclusion? I mean, I feel like a broken CD-player repeating the same old track over and over again. And also the reason I feel fucking trapped in an ever-repeating cycle. Don't get me wrong, I am more than happy with everything at the moment. But still. There is a relentless little nagging voice inside of my brain that's enticing me to somehow try and break free from the ups-and-downs of life. If that's even possible; and I highly doubt that to be honest. It's like Karma - something you can not escape. And whilst you know me enough by now to know that I am not spiritual or religious in any way, I do believe the underlying concept of Karma to be applicable to everyday life. If you behave decently and well towards others, eventually good will come to you in some form. And well, the opposite applies too: if you behave like an asshole you'll ultimately be punished for your wicked ways in some way. And albeit having to admit that there are enough cases where this does not seem to apply, I still believe the idea of Karma to hold some truth. All the times I have behaved like an utter jerk or have hurt people it has turned around to bite me in the ass in one way or another. And whilst not every time I behaved decently has been rewarded in some way, it still is true that it does not only make you feel better about yourself but also increases the likelihood of good things coming your way. At least that's how I have experienced it so far. Mostly. There are of course also examples of times where good deeds have been completely unrequited and even led to disastrous consequences for me. In retrospect even these times have been evened out by other positive experiences that can somehow also be traced back to aforementioned consequences, so the overall concept of Karma still applies. And somehow I find solace in that fact. Because you see so many people acting like the world revolves around them, and it's just so great to 'know' that these assholes will eventually have some sort of huge "down" within their lives because of that behavior. Know is in parentheses because you can not possibly be sure of a thing like that. But at least I like to think that it is that way, and that gives me some sort of comfort when dealing with those kind of assholes.

Anyway. I am really lacking creative capabilities today. I feel somewhat drained lately. I am probably just too happy to write. Or maybe I am just lazy as fuck and am using that as an excuse for myself. Which is actually not uncommon at all; if there is a possibility to blame unproductive behavior on anything but ourselves, us humans are extremely quick to do so. And understandably so. I mean, it's easy to face being too lazy to do things you're not interested in, but when it comes to things you would actually want to do but for some reason feel unable to complete them it's a whole other story. Because, well, you want to finish these activities and reach the goals you set for yourself. And the feeling of inability that hinders the progress towards it may just stem from laziness. A laziness that is not necessarily bad though, because your inner batteries need recharging once in a while and those periods of non-productivity may lead to just that. It only becomes problematic when the non-productive periods outweigh the productive ones. And I don't necessarily mean outweigh in temporal terms. The productive periods can be a lot shorter than the non-productive ones. Some people just work better when they cram their creative span into a few frenzied days between weeks of not doing anything. Which is a perfectly valid way of working, as long as the fruits said productivity yields are big enough. Which is very subjective of course, and entirely depends on your own perception of things. For some that may be a few hundred words, for others a few hundred pages; if you're writing that is obviously. But it applies to any kind of creative process. I myself usually try to just write a little at least every other day because otherwise I lose my flow so to say and have a harder time getting stuff done the way I would want to. Which is also yet another reason this post took such a long time to be completed actually. 11 days for an entry to appear. That's a little longer than almost-weekly, but still roughly fits the scheme. Plus I doubt that anyone is really going to complain about it. 

But I am getting tired. And well, as outlined above I really think that I have exhausted my creative potential for the next couple of days, and seeing as I really need and want to continue working on my novel, I will need to be creatively active again quite soon, so I am putting a stop to this moderately interesting but hopefully still to some degree enjoyable entry, and as always leaving you with some good music to unwind:

Astronaut - Quantum (Spag Heddy Remix)
-> This is one of the songs that could probably literally make me cum. It is such an epic fucking remix of an already awesomely melodic song, and the build up to the raw drop that still manages to remain melodic throughout and thereby not destroying the charm of the original but adding a raw bite to it so to say, that makes this entire song such a perfect musical creating, so... Enjoy!

Spag Heddy - Pink Koeks
-> Well after just featuring the remix above I felt enticed to research some more songs of this guy, and stumbled upon this gem, which besides being completely fucking sick and awesome also makes me happy somehow, maybe it's the melody, I don't know, but hearing this track makes me smile, and well it's just an amazing tune, I am really liking this artist and will surely have more of his works here in later posts, so... Enjoy!

Annihilator - Alison Hell
-> This song is, as you can see at the start of the video based on a true story of a little girl who slowly fell into the depths of insanity, starting with a simple fear of boogey man. Well, besides from these sick guitar riffs that far surpass many modern-day guitarists wildest dreams, this song is extremely deep and reflects the development of Alison's mental deterioration frighteningly well. All in all a great classic, so... Enjoy!

Iron Maiden - Brave New World 
-> Although I have a certain aversion to the great Huxley novel of the same name because I was forced to deal with it in English class, it holds a great truth about what humanity's heading to, and well this song somewhat touches on that theme as well, there's lots of social criticism in there, and it's just an overall beautifully sad song that most definitely needed featuring here, so... Enjoy!

Andre Nickatina & San Quinn - Ayo for Yayo 
-> While I know neither of these artists' other songs or even background or anything at all actually, I do know how much I enjoy this song, and how fucking awesome it simply is. And of course a warning about the dangers of cocaine addiction. But that shouldn't be a nuisance, it's still a fucking great song, the beat is really chill and the guys flow fits so amazingly with it, making it an all in all awesome tune, so... Enjoy!

DMX - Where The Hood At 
-> Whilst being pretty homophobic, which is not unusual in Rap, this is still a fine-ass piece of rap music right here. D to the M to the X. I mean, you all know this song, and there is not much more I can really say. Great classic tune, so... Enjoy!

Well, this did not turn out as one of my best posts to be honest, and I do apologize for the slight lack of quality which occurred because of reasons outlined above. I will do my best to compensate for this with my next post though, and will also try and post within the next seven days instead of eleven this time. But anyway, I hope this entry was still enjoyable to you, and wish you a good night, or day, depending on which part of the world you're reading this from.


Peace! 

So, here we are

at the very top of western civilization. And is there anything to take away from this maddening scheme that is our time? I am not so sure that there actually is.
I mean we have all these amazing achievements, mankind has come such a long way since the first ape decided to walk on two legs, but still I am ambivalent when it comes to defining what worth there actually is in our existence. And I am not even going to touch the whole big question thing here. I am simply trying to wrap my mind around the ego that us humans have developed in the course of evolution. All we're doing is fucking, drinking, and slowly killing each other, we're essentially playing GTA with the world. And I'm not even sure of that.

What I am sure of though is that I am sitting on my couch right now, showcasing my inner makings to an anonymous public with my roommate snoring on an air-mattress next to me, slowly drifting through various stratospheres whilst watching Californication and smoking. My eyes are somewhat focused on the screen of my laptop and on the TV at the same time, and I can't help but feel a certain resemblance between myself and Hank Moody. I know it's fucking cliche, and I also know that everybody likes to think that they can identify with their favorite fictional character, but goddamn, I have been where this guy is portrayed as being in my own way, so I feel somewhat of a strange relation between myself and the idea of "Hank Moody". Not the person per se obviously, seeing as we're talking about a fictional character, but much more the idea of the guy. The free-lancing writer, the crazed, erratic, gonzo-influenced author, the anti-hero essentially. The other extreme so to say. The anti-gravitational pole, the scapegoat, the punching bag.

I think that we all create our lives in a way so that we are the protagonist of our own little tale, we all want to be the martyr, the chosen one, we all want recognition in some way or another.  What we're all essentially striving for is immortality of sorts, be it by monetary success, literary excellence, musical masterpieces, or anything else that can enable us to buy a place in the expensive neighborhood called 'history' forever. By expensive I do not mean any actual value, but rather the effort and sacrifice that is necessary to achieve such a place, the relentless pursuit of having one's name remembered by the world that costs its high price in its own way, simply because remembrance is almost exclusively created in destruction and despair. In order to be known you need to have suffered, seems to be the most common denominator found among ïtoday's audiences, which is pretty rough on those creating entertainment because albeit leading to works of staggering genius, these rough patches that are the root of excellence do fuck you up quite intensely over time, and results are usually just a coincidental side-effect of these lows, which in themselves are not defined by a feeling of contributing to the literary pedigree by using the blues to create an epitaph to these periods of sadness, but rather just by wallowing in narcissistic despair and self-loathing until the brink of collapse, at which point words are the only thing keeping one from entering an eternal drug and drinking binge. Still, these fruits grown from sad soil using depressed fertilizers are usually the rarest literary gems that authors have to offer, making the fear and loathing leading up to their creation a necessity for actual greatness, which is a pretty hard blow on the writing and entertainment community seeing as no-one really wants to suffer for an essentially unknown audience, but everybody has to in order to achieve true greatness, at least that's what it seems like.

But this tangent about immortality through depressive genius just coincidentally appeared above to be honest. I am still unsure, once again, about the actual points I was thinking of making when I started to write this about two days ago in a hazed frenzy in the middle of the night, completely strung out and manically trying to recognize the letters I was typing, which I did up to a point of complete desperation, then I stopped continuing working until now. But even in retrospect I am quite contend with what I wrote, I believe I touched on some interesting issues in there, but this is not the time for self-flattery. No, I think I will now address a different topic altogether, namely that of communication.

Sounds boring enough when put like that, but I can assure you that it's not. Think about it, in all of its aspects. We communicate to express things in a way that other individuals can understand and respond to, that much is obvious. But why is it so hard still, after a few million years of practice, to actually say what we want to say in a way that people understand? I mean, the biggest problems usually arise from miscommunication, and its the simplest things, the smallest of words, the slightest of mistakes that can set into motion a chain-reaction of unforeseeable events leading up to huge altercations or similar nuisances. And why? Most words aren't even that ambiguous in themselves, but it's the context in which they are used combined with the humans natural need to over-analyze and interpret utterances by others that renders them indecipherable to some, making these individuals prone to misunderstandings, which is not their fault per se, but they are rather, in most cases that is, to be seen as mere victims of circumstance. But unfortunately, there is an equal amount of people either too stupid to understand the actual essence of what they are being told, or too biased by their own preconceived notions to even try to understand anything but what they want to understand, making fruitful communication damn near impossible. We have now essentially made out that there are people that are enticed by circumstance to misunderstand, that there are people too stupid to understand, and that there are people who don't want to understand what is being said because of their own prejudice. So, why do we even bother communicating anymore? 

The answer to that is, as many things are, based on the basic human need for social recognition by others, we are social animals after all, driven by the instinct to express and impress ourselves and others, meaning that even though most people we will encounter will not understand, not properly at least, what we're trying to tell them we will still keep on uttering sentences and opinions in their proximity because of the slight chance that at least one of them will be able to grasp the intended meaning. Because we need our personal meaning to be conveyed to other people, we want others to understand the essence behind the sentences, but unfortunately the understanding usually does not match the intentions, which is just sad because messages and opinions are easily deluded simply by misinterpretation, by ambiguity. 

Even these words right here will not sound to you the way they sound to me, will not convey to you what they convey to me, and will not reach you the way I mean them to, and I am very aware of that. But I know what I want to say, and I know that the people who feel as I feel can usually understand underlying themes and subtle references in these texts, and those who do not feel that way are not meant to understand anyway and will therefore read and understand whatever fits best into their narrow perception, and not what I actually want to say, which is fine, because it separates the wheat from the chaff, separates those that see actual value in what I write from those just along for the ride.

"The ride". The inexplicable yet omnipresent journey, the basic drive forward that compels us all to move towards an unidentified goal. This crazy roller-coaster of life that jolts us up and down in completely randomized and erratic patterns with seemingly no logical adjacency. We all know it to be true, life is composed of its highs and lows that in the long-run cancel each other out to create a comfortable drift in retrospect. In retrospect mind you, an up always feels like an up, and a down always feels like a down, but looking back it was all just somewhere in the middle. And isn't that exactly what we're programmed to be striving for? The passive middle, the inactive acceptance, the elemination of all the extremes, a dulling numbness of the senses? Searching for what's right or what's true is no longer perceived as necessary, no, just finding what works, however badly, has become the most prestigious achievement attainable. But unfortunately that's nicely aligning with my point about mediocrity being the end that is in itself a mean to obtain personal gratification, meaning that I am actually part of the root of this problem to some extent. But then again maintaining that level of constant mediocrity essentially boils down to being well above average in order to be able to seem mediocre enough so as to not having to do more than needed and expected at that level, which in turn means that the search for right and true has already been done personally, just not publicly. Notwithstanding it is just small percentage where this applies, most people seeming to be fine with what works and allegedly not searching for truth or rightfulness are actually like that and do not pretend to be just to have to do less. Or maybe we just don't know it yet.

But anyway. I have been drifting around between topics and ideas way too much in this post, which is why I'll put a stop to this madness now, and leave you be with some music, as always: 

Iron Maiden - No Prayer For The Dying
-> Great track from the Maiden' album of the same name, beautiful guitars and vocal, legendary band, and the rest of the album is definitely worth listening to as well if you haven't yet, so... Enjoy! 

Leonard Cohen - Hallejulah (Rufus Wrainwright Cover)
-> I first heard Cohen's original version back in the 2000 or so when my I was riding in my mum's car to somewhere, heard it again in the Watchmen movie like eight years later, and now found this awesome cover of it. And albeit not being the least bit religious I find this song to be amazingly beautiful and somewhat inspiring, so... Enjoy!

Bob Marley - Jammin' (Live Version)
-> Unfortunately I could not find the studio version of this on the mobile version of YouTube, don't know if it's there in the desktop version, but it doesn't really matter, you all know this song anyway, and it's an all-time classic that needed featuring on here, so... Enjoy!

Alborosie - Kingston Town
-> I haven't listened to this song in what feels like forever, a friend of my showed it to me in 2009 or 10 I believe, during a weekend of camping that consisted solely of getting too messed up for words, which was fun, and the song reminds me of that and is in itself really awesome, so... Enjoy! 

Keizer - Niet Haten
-> First of all, I want to emphasize that I neither condone nor endorse the whole "hashtag" craze that has taken over the internet, I am thoroughly despised by it actually. Nevertheless, Keizer is a fucking beast and one of the fastet European rappers to date, make sure to listen to the complete track, the third part is the most mind-blowing (starts at 1:50 for all you impatient people), but the whole song is pretty cool, so... Enjoy!

Ice Cube - Hello (ft. Mc Ren & Dr. Dre)
-> Did I put this on here already at some point? If I did I'm sorry, but I don't think so... Anyway, awesome classic track, first heard whilst watching the "Up In Smoke" Tour on DVD and on numerous occassions since... Enjoy! 

So, this turned out to be a somewhat disorganized post, dealing with my multiple lines of thought throughout, but I do hope it's still enjoyable, I completed it in multiple sittings and usually in an altered state of mind, so it may seem somewhat erratic at some points, but I think I managed to mostly keep it together. Anyway, I am uploading this from my mobile phone in a Coffeeshop, and seeing as I have never done that before I don't know whether there are any adverse effects on layout or links when accessing it from a PC, please let me know if that is the case!

Peace! 

Edit: it was the case, the spacings and paragraphs were off, but I took care of that now. And btw, that kind of thing is what the comment section is there for, someone could have said that it looks weird, there were at least 8 people that read it before I fixed it, and in my opinion it was clearly visible that the spacing etc. were not the way they're supposed to, but maybe that's just me...