Moods pt.II

Despondency is my natural state. It's only fantasies that provide me temporary happiness, whether they be of success, power, sex, popularity, love, wealth, or whatever else. Problems occur when I start to confuse this fantasy with reality, which always catches up with it sooner or later. I'm brought back to reality with a thud, and what was once despondency is now despair. I like what Virginia Woolf says through one of her characters in Between the Acts: "This is death...when illusion fails." Not that Woolf was suggesting this, but maybe life is the biggest illusion of all.

I'll end with the lyrics to Nine Inch Nail's Eraser (if anyone comes across the T-shirt with these printed on it, please tell me. I saw someone wearing it at Blink a few weeks back, it's awesome. Rare though, I don't think they make it anymore):

Need you
Dream you
Find you
Taste you
Fuck you
Use you
Scar you
Break you
Lose me
Hate me
Smash me
Erase me
Kill me
Kill me
Kill me
Kill me

The Meaning of Life: Fate

I always used to scorn people who believed in fate - life is just a series of events that are causally connected to the ones that preceded them. There is no room for any superstition such as fate or destiny to exist. To me it was a way people rationalised external events in a way that would fit with their way of thinking. If they saw a person they had a crush on on a bus, for example, they're likely to rationalise it by saying that it was fate that they saw that person (what's that Ben Stiller movie where Stiller's character hits on women by talking about how fate brough them together...). From there, where does it end? It was fate that they were listening to Love of my Life by Dave Matthews when they saw the person, and from there they start to believe that the two are destined to be together. Meanwhile, all the crush is thinking is that he needs to get to the city by 3:30 for an interview.

As you can see, I have a tendency to be very cynical. Recently, however, I've begun to be that person I used to despise, that weak person who believes in fate to make their life seem more meaningful than it really is. Why have I suddenly changed? It's hard for me to answer that, because quite frankly I don't know. It's not a rational thing, that's for sure - I didn't sit down working out the logical consistency of both arguments, pro-fate and anti-fate, and decide which made the most sense. Perhaps it’s just that I did recognise a weakness in myself, an infallibility that is common to all human beings. Maybe sometimes we need that something extra to believe in.

There are no great stories of fate I have to share just yet. The only one I can think of as an illustrative example is that as I was about to buy a birthday card for my uncle, I found that the newsagent was closed. “It’s probably meant to be”, I thought, whereas in the past I would have just got pissed off and cursed to myself about how stupid it is for a newsagent to be closed on a Sunday. (I actually did end up getting acard from a shop three doors down. Maybe it was fate drawing me there, because the cards were very cheap there :p). Does everything happen for a reason? And I don’t mean that in the Anthony Robbins sense, that everything happens due to a causal connection with a past event. I mean, do events carry with them meaning, that we are meant to decipher? Clues to plot us on our journey towards our destiny? In The Alchemist by Paulo Coelho, which I think I’ve talked about before on this blog, we’re told by a wise sage that “everything is an omen” (awesome book by the way, and absolute must-read for anyone who’s even remotely interested in this sort of stuff).

I’m not sure if everything is an omen, maybe it is, maybe it isn’t. But for some reason, I’m finding myself looking for meaning in things far more often than I used to. Perhaps I've begun the next stage of my fate.

Destiny Is Upon Us

We are going to Germany! This is our destiny. All hail SAINT GUUS!

Kris_man on hiatus

Due to my computer being fucked, I won't be able to post as often as I'd like.

Quote of the Week V

"I don't know why I bother writing this dumbass blog, nobody reads the cruddy thing anyway." - Kris

Top-down Bottom-up

I think I can sum it up by saying this: you put in a performance (because that's what it really is, a performance) that you think is something like the best you could have done (and I'm not talking about "best" in terms of effort, I'm talking about output), yet you still don't seem to be making an impact. I think that's when it's time to just let go, because some things in life are black and white. Shades of grey are just a bonus.

Song of the Week VII

She is Everything - Spock's Beard.

I downloaded a few songs by these guys, and none of them really amazed me, in fact, i didn't even like them at all, songs like Waste Away, Skin and All on a Sunday. But I persisted with them because they're such a big name and I still hadn't heard much of their stuff - what if there was a Spock's Beard gem waiting for me? Well, there was, and it's this song. I got the live version from Gluttons for Punishment; I think it's a bit longer than the usual, which is great, because I wouldn't want it to be any shorter. The intro is phenomenal, the guitar solo is perfect, the chorus is beautiful, and the chord progession is simple, yet wonderously effective. 5 stars. A warning, though - this is not party music. But if you like music which is not frivolous, which has a bit of thought behind it, then you have to hear this song.