But Why Does It Matter?

Quick note:  I really wanted to do a good job with this post, but I have been feeling under the weather lately.  It probably isn’t the best time to write this, but I haven’t written in so long I had to now with some free time.  I believe I’ll still get my point across, even if it’s poorly done.

When I was in high school, I was afraid of everything.  I know, I look back on most of my life with a nostalgia that is completely false, believing a lot of times of my life to be much better than they were at the time, but I remember high school.  I was quiet, shy, much like I am today.  I played sports, and I didn’t have a problem (that I remember) with anyone really in school.  I was completely forgettable, and that was by design.  

I remember in high school being terrified of anyone talking about me.  I was terrified of anyone knowing whether or not I liked a girl; I was terrified of any girl liking me.  It was irrational, and looking back on it now it seems very silly and ridiculous, but at the time it felt like the most natural thing to do because high school was my world.  I was terrified of being made fun of, being ridiculed.  It affected everything about my time in high school – I didn’t play sports with any confidence because I didn’t want to fail and be embarrassed, and I never dated any girls because I didn’t want anyone to make fun of me for the girl I was dating, even if she was pretty or popular.

My high school experience was one of the most common experiences of all – I didn’t want to stand out, I desperately wanted to stay in.

I succeeded, for the most part, even if I lost out on a lot of opportunities to have fun and experience things I should have experienced.  I was safe, and that was good for me.

I tried my best not to make fun of anyone in high school, though I know I did before that.  It is something I regretted, even at the time.  I knew how much it would hurt me if someone did that to me, so I did my best to avoid doing it to anyone else, even if it was the easiest and most effective way to be funny to other people (aka. “cool”) while also keeping attention away from me.  Trying to be cool for people I haven’t thought about for almost ten years now…

I did fail though.  I didn’t make fun of people, but that didn’t stop me from laughing when other people, even my friends, made fun of someone else.  My friends and I would make fun of each other, and that’s fine, because we all knew it was for fun.  When I saw, or heard, other people being made fun of for laughs, or being made fun of maliciously, I never stood up, never fought against it.  I laughed with the crowd, or I looked away.  In either case, I failed at that, and that is something I still regret today.

One of the simplest, and therefore most common names we called kids in our high school then was “fag”.  Either that, or we called them “gay”.  I avoided it; I laughed at it.  I used the words myself.  It was one of the easiest ways to ostracize someone, and it was funny, even if it wasn’t true.  I am straight, and in high school some people thought I was gay because I never dated any girls.  I vehemently defended myself.  Being labeled as “gay” was one of the worst insults a person could receive, we all thought.  Being “gay” was also one of the worst ways to stand out.

What is my point with this long, uninteresting, completely common high school story?  I’ve been thinking about my high school time recently this past month, as all avenues of thought had been bringing me to this point.  Jason Collins recently came out as the first active gay male athlete in any of the major sports in America.  My girlfriend had recently been watching a lot of ‘Draw my Life’ videos on YouTube, and watched a couple from some people who were gay.  A couple of years ago, I read Fun Home, a graphic novel by Alison Bechdel for a class in college that I enjoyed thoroughly.  I thought about all these different situations, and my own experience growing up, as my stepmom reacted to me about the Jason Collins story:

“Why is this a big deal?  Why does it matter what he is?  What difference does it make?”

Besides the simple point that no one had done this before him should serve as hint enough, I thought about all these stories.  I didn’t answer her, because I hate discussion with my family.  It never resolves, and everyone just gets loud.

I have tried, for the past month, to re-imagine myself in high school.  I have tried to imagine myself as who I was in high school, exactly as it happened, but with one dramatic difference.  I tried to imagine being Alison Bechdel.  I tried to imagine being the people from YouTube.  I tried to imagine being deathly afraid of being different, of being labeled a “fag”.  I knew what it was to be afraid of being made fun of, being an outcast.  That was easy to remember.

What wasn’t easy to imagine was being terribly afraid of being different, being afraid of being the one thing everyone would seem to hate me for being; and yet, as hard as I tried, I couldn’t bring myself to like girls.  I couldn’t bring myself to be “normal” in this world I was forced to be in.  Every day,  I would have to deny everything about me; about who I am.  Just so I wouldn’t be destroyed by the rest of the “normal” people.  Every day, living in a place that would never accept me if they knew me – if only I could escape.  

I tried to imagine being a young person in high school who is gay.  I tried to imagine being a person in this world who is gay.  A person living in a world where it is still acceptable to be cast out.  A person living in a world where it is alright to live in some places and be yourself, but not every place.  A person living in a world where you think something is wrong with you because you aren’t like other people, and for a lot of people who you are isn’t right.  

How confusing it must be.  How unfair it must be.  How cruel it must be to be gay in this world we live in right now – especially when you are young.  I wish I could understand this; I wish, if I ever do, to understand it as a younger man.

Being gay has never been wrong, but that is impossible to explain to someone who is gay and has had to live in this world.

My stepmom asked why it mattered that Jason Collins came out.  Why do we have to know what he is.  That who he is doesn’t have any bearing on his profession, nor does it have any bearing on our lives and our perception of him.  She did not say this in this exact way, but this is what she was intending.

And maybe yes, she is technically correct.  Yes, it has no affiliation with his profession.  Yes, it shouldn’t change our perception of him.  And of course no, she is not correct that this didn’t matter.  That coming out, by any person who is gay, doesn’t matter.  

In offices and workplaces around the country, it is illegal to ask questions of sexual preference.  There are anti-harassment laws in place.  There are reasons for both these laws, and they are obvious:  to protect against discrimination of homosexuals, and harassment of them in all workplaces.  They are still in effect today, because they are still necessary.  They have also not been repealed for a reason.

It may be illegal to make discriminatory jokes or insults in the workplace because it is against the law, but that doesn’t mean that that discrimination is gone.  It is gone because it is illegal for it to be present.  Almost like the army preferred with homosexuals not too long ago, and the boy scouts do to this day.  What my stepmom doesn’t, and all people who make that argument against the importance of coming out do not understand, is that just because the discrimination and excommunication of homosexuals has been legislated out of your daily life, doesn’t mean the discrimination and hatred against them is gone, out of people’s hearts.  

I mentioned I played sports before also to make this point – though I played on the most amateur level, I know that a locker room is not an office space.  I know a little about what happens in a locker room.  I know (as most people should) that locker rooms in professional sports do not fall under the same anti-discrimination and anti-harassment laws that govern where the rest of us work.  A locker room in high school is the same as a locker room in professional sports, only with larger people.  The jokes, the slander, and the prejudice, I’m certain, are all quite prevalent in those locker rooms.  All the athletes who are fortunate enough to make it to the professional level come to view the locker room as a second home.  Another sanctuary away from the real world.  One of maybe two places where they could be who they are, and say what they mean.  Their homes and their locker room are their only places of safety.  I can only imagine it, but:  if I was gay, and in the locker rooms I was in in high school, I would never feel more like an outcast in any other place.

For those professional athletes who are gay, it is not an office space they have to face.  It is not a place filled with people they may or may not like and/or never care to, who are legally obligated not to hate them.  A locker room is always described as a “family”, where the men inside are “brothers”.  Some (hopefully all) will accept a member of their family as gay.  Some (unfortunately, as I have seen in my family) will inevitably not be so accepting.  And, when they aren’t, there is no law telling them they have to, in that locker room.

I have tried for over a month to put myself in the frame of mind as someone who is young, and doesn’t understand yet why they are gay; someone who is older, more mature, knows they are gay, but are afraid to let others know; someone who is gay, and is willing to let the world know, even to great undeserved ridicule.  The mere reaction to Jason Collins’s decision should have been enough to answer my stepmom’s questions for her, but we know better anyway.

I have only tried to understand what it is like to be gay for a month, and it is relentlessly daunting; I can’t even imagine what this world is like for someone who is gay.  For my part, I apologize for the rest of this world, and for my inability as a younger man to be stronger, and understand.

Four Wonderfully Unexpected Years

I was pretty young when I learned about the lines on my hand.  Pretty young being about 10, 11, or 12.  Maybe younger.  About the same time I feel like all of us learn about them.  I learned my life line was the one that wrapped around my thumb from the middle of my palm.  Mine wraps all the way to almost the other side of my hand; this means, if I am reading it correctly, that I will live until I am 135.  There are a few more minor ones, but two I was always interested in after my life line – my fate line (or money line, I don’t know what that one is called exactly), and my love line.  From what I understood, I am going to be very rich someday; I was also going to find my true love, and be with her forever.

Like most of us who find entertainment in hocus pocus, fantasy and the romance we like to believe in, I accepted those things from these lines as I do from a daily horoscope:  only accepting the positive, believing it true, and dismissing the rest of the information as baseless and unreal.  When I was young I accepted the idea of finding my true love, they being my first love, and living with them in complete peace and happiness the rest of my life.  Many people who become truly great in the field they have chosen to pursue with their lives realized at a very young age what they wanted to dedicate their lives to – I could never decide what I wanted my life’s work to be as a child, but as far back as I can remember I knew I had one constant hope; one desire that was constant -

- I would fall in love, at first sight, and that girl would be my love the rest of my life.

 

I tried for years to make this so; I tried so very hard, for years, to tell myself that the girl I briefly locked eyes with at the water fountain near the end of one day in fifth grade was that girl.  I believed this throughout middle school.  I believed this into high school.  I looked past other girls, until one would approach me.  I would convince myself that I had been looking in the wrong place the entire time; that the girl who wanted to talk to me was the one I would fall in love with, not the one I had met eyes with years ago.  I believed my true love would find me; all I had to do was get out of its way, and let it happen.  When I convinced myself it happened, I learned I wouldn’t have it unless I tried a little.  I tried…very little.

I chased this belief in college.  I didn’t know what I wanted to major in, but I knew I wanted my love story to be written this way.  I had to try a little.  

And yes, I learned in college that life wasn’t given to us.  Life wasn’t waiting for us.  Life is exactly what we see it as, and we should approach it as such until we find out otherwise.  I learned as a twenty-year-old man that I couldn’t write my own love story before it happened.  I couldn’t plan my love, because it wasn’t a given thing.  My love story was not written in the lines on my hand.  It was not a script in a movie.  

Actually, I learned I couldn’t plan my love story as a twenty-two-year old man.  I was still trying desperately to do so when I was twenty.

I learned, as a twenty-two-year-old, that life is not a script.  Scripts are created out of thin air; scripts are not real.  When a script is bad, it is criticized for not being more real.  Maybe I learned, more accurately, that life isn’t created from a script – it is the other way around.

I know, I know.  What a terrible line.  I would definitely find that in a bad script.  

 

The story I have told many times about her already through bad blog posts, bad poems, and bad short stories, does sound very much like a script from a romantic comedy.  She was seeing someone else when we met, I convinced myself of the sanctity of another girl so thoroughly I couldn’t allow myself to think about someone else.  When she broke up with her boyfriend, and was single, something inside me told me not to pass on her while I waited for this other girl.  I had to try, to give someone another chance.

I have told this story far better in other places, and will continue to do so the rest of my life.  It is a simple conclusion you probably have come to at this point:  that girl, the girl I took a chance on, is the love of my life, and we have been together for four years today.

This post is not about the story of how we met, nor is it about the nature of true love.  It is not how, after four years with her, and everything we have gone through, she still makes me completely happy.  After four years, there is not one thing about her I have found that I don’t like.  After four years, no one before or since has ever been able to make me come alive just by looking at me; coming in the room I am in; coming home after a long day at work.  We have said all these things to each other, nearly every single day, and though we know it doesn’t mean any less to say them, it is well understood we understand them.

This is not a post about my incredible luck.  This is not a post about how I, the least social person imaginable, the person who was the most dumbstruck by a girl talking to him that he feared he would never be able to be himself around a girl he liked, wished to have his girlfriend be his best friend.  However impossible, I wished to have the girl whom I loved be happy with the person I am when I am not around anyone else, not even family.  This is not a post about how the first girl whom I ever dated became that person, and how completely rare that is in this world, especially today.

This post is about a script, although I didn’t know exactly that was what this post was about until just now.  This post is about the things we haven’t always said to each other.  This post is about how, after four years, every day has been the same.  Yes, the days have grown to become, as it would seem after a few years of the same thing over and over again, to be expected in their outcomes.

Every day has been the same.  The same greeting of pleasant surprises.  The same feeling of wonder at seeing her sleeping face in the morning.  The same, unexpected feeling I get every time I see her when I wake up, that fills me with a different, newborn awe at this love of mine.  Every day when she comes back home from work, or I come home from work (fingers crossed) and see her face I am greeted with the same.  The same feeling of something I have never felt before:  when all the distractions, frustrations, failures of another day in a life where I have not yet done what I felt I would…melt away at the sight of her.  Every day I feel the same feeling of utterly inimitable, kick-my-feet-in-the-air joy that comes from seeing her perfect blue eyes; her small, sweet smile.  Every day I am filled with that same desperate desire to remember everything that was new and wonderful about my day with her.  Everything that made me laugh; every little joke we shared.  Every smile of hers; every touching of all those lines on her hands.  Every night, I am filled with the same irrevocable feeling that comes from a day of new surprises, a feeling that is always consistent in its originality:  there is no other person in the world who I would rather be, no other place I would rather be, no time I would rather be in.  No one else I could ever dream to be with more.  I am completely, honestly…purely happy here.  I am a happy that will never go away; a happy that will never surprise me by being unsurprising.  This is what I always wanted – this is who I will always want.

And, every morning, I wake up with that same, different wonder.  The new wonder, every time.

 

This post is about a script four years in the making.  A script that has been more organic than anything I have ever written.  A script that is more natural, more real than anything I will ever hope to write.  A script that will always be better, because it is real.  

 

It is the script I always wanted to write, but never knew I could.  And I only hope I can keep writing it.  

 

Happy Anniversary my love.

The Need to Maintain Balance…

(Quick note:  I know I’m not in the proper frame of mind to write this post right now – I haven’t done anything all day and my mind is a hideous blob.  In any case, I wanted to write this thing the other day, as it applied to everything I have been thinking about vaguely for a month.  Thus is the way of my world right now.  I am afraid I will be too brief, and not nearly as clever as I would like to be when talking about this though, as per reasons previously stated.  So I’ll probably write about it later as well.  So here we go – on with the ellipses connecting to the title…)

…in order to maintain harmony in our world.  With every action, there must be an equal and opposite reaction.

And no, this has nothing to do with watching The Dark Knight Rises a couple nights in a row.

As I have mentioned before on this, I felt like the followers on my page were merely fabrications by WordPress in order to get me excited about my writing, and thus continue to use their product.  I know, it is a stupid conspiracy theory, and a pretty lame one, but I decided to inspect a few of my “followers” on this.

It turns out they are real – dreadfully real.  I will not mention names, but there was one blog from one of those people in particular that infuriated me.  Incidentally, it was a blog created with the singular goal of attempting to shock those who read it…for one reason or another.

I was not offended by what was put on this blog.  Not much at all these days offends me.  What offended me was the notion of this person who was writing this:  they created this blog in order to write inflammatory things, with only the intention of offense.  They have no real purpose in writing the things they do; therefore, they are the shittiest form of shock author that exist in this world.

They are the kind of person who will write “racist shit” “sexist shit” “mindless bigotry” (insert any you may wish) on their page without purpose.  Without context.  Without responsibility.  What is their intention?  They have none.  I have found this irresponsibility of language and its use upsetting for years, because it is merely a desperate attention-seeking device; the simplest way to cause a fuss with the “common folk” and their sensibilities.

We know these people well.  There is a time and place for such language, such dramatic actions in true art or true events, but not as a way for someone to shove their stupid face in your life.

Simple rule:  there is no good reason to use the image of a swastika.  Not to explain it “really was an image of peace and good nature before the Nazis ruined it;” not to try to shock people into thinking someone “is” a Nazi.  There is no middle ground with fire:  if you don’t use it responsibly, you deserve to burn in it.

People like this tend to see the world in a way that most of us do, but don’t understand how many of us really do see it this way.  They believe they are special – they believe they need to show everyone what they see – which is something we have already seen and either accepted, or fought against and made our peace with, whether negatively or positively.  These people have, for the first time, seen the imbalance rampant in the world, and work stupidly to try to gain attention, rather than trying diligently and maturely trying to move forward and solve a problem.

That problem we find is the imbalance in most everything we come in contact with in this world.  The disputes we face:

Socially – everything we face in our world is a conflict.  Can we stop with the swastikas then?

Politically – the world begets FoxNews, FoxNews begets MSNBC – and really, can we stop with the swastikas?

Everyday life – “Who put this picture of a swastika on my computer…and why can’t I get rid of it?!”

Everything we face; everything we encounter in our lives demands a sense of equilibrium.  When that equilibrium is challenged, we fight as much as we feel it is necessary to return the harmony of our world.

I will say that I was possibly the young swastika idiot in my life years ago.  I would have probably been worse, if not for my crippling lack of social skills.  I was constantly in battle with everything at that prime age of my life: the Yankees were in the midst of their string of four World Series titles in five years (or three in four, I don’t remember exactly and I don’t want to look it up).  It was the late nineties, and Derek Jeter became the Angel of New York.  Because he was the Angel there, apparently it made him everyone’s in the rest of the country.  We had no say in the matter:  Derek Jeter was God – get used to it.

Naturally I revolted.  I am an Indians fan:  ”Omar is one hundred times the defensive player Derek is!”  I was not a Yankees fan:  ”Hell, Nomar is a far better all-around player!”  I yelled at the TV – I yelled at Derek Jeter in particular.  ”WHY DO YOU THINK YOU’RE THE GREATEST???  WHY DO YOU KEEP SAYING YOU’RE THE BEST???”

I relate this period of time in my life to the times when I would watch my dad get angry at the computer (for going too slow; for the swastikas he couldn’t get rid of) and hitting the monitor to make it go faster.  I did it.  We all did it.  ”Don’t kill the messenger.”  I didn’t want to kill the messenger – I wanted to kill the subject of the message.  With the overabundance of love heaped upon Derek Jeter, I had to fight back.  I had to return the world to its balance.

I hated people for being loved so much by everyone; I loved people for being hated so much by everyone.  I did this for years.  There have been separate times in my life I have equally hated – and loved – Steven Jackson (love him now).  The same thing happened in movies, and actors.  I used to watch the Academy Awards with an unreasonable amount of vitriol coursing through my veins:  first at the overflowing decadence of the pre-show, where the rich and famous would trounce around in overly elaborate costumes, ordained with praise from screaming fans and ass-kissing media types who would applaud them for being able to recite someone else’s lines in front of a camera.  I hated them outside.

Then I would cheer them inside – when the ones who I thought “deserved to win” won.  Ones who had an outside chance; ones who I believed should win when others didn’t.

I was an idiot, and I went about trying to restore balance in my life through avenues like the one idiot person who follows me on this blog.

It has only recently occurred to me, within the past few years (well beyond the time when I knew everything) the nature of the messenger, the message, and the imbalance.

Everyone is on one side or another.  You either love or hate Jennifer Lawrence, Meryl Streep, Jack Nicholson.  Seth MacFarlane.  Don’t kill the messenger, kill the subject.  You either love or hate Derek Jeter, gun control, art.  Subjects in our world these days have slid tightly to the middle of the scale, with our weights moving farther and farther out to the edges.

But was it the subject that needed restoring?  I learned, even before balance, many years ago that Derek Jeter was not the one who was saying how great he was to the world.  Some people do this and, yes, they deserve to be chastised for that.  Actors and actresses seem to be some of the greatest offenders, and it is not far one would have to look on the internet to find some young idiot waving a swastika at their effigy.

No more swastikas.  I promise.  I’m done shocking you.

I learned only recently that despite all my ranting, all my anger, and all my attempts, I have never been able to return a balance to my outside world that is so important to all of us.  I haven’t been able to do this because I now know I have been fighting the wrong battle for years.

I’m not supposed to fight the subject.  I need to be fighting the message.  It is the message in this world that has been corrupting the balance in my life.  Messages that seek to drive the scales to topple over.  It is the nature of the message that seeks all of our imbalance, and in order to fight that we cannot feed it with our anger or our opposite reactions.  We have to use knowledge, compassion, patience…all that healthy shit.

We just need to seek balance to maintain balance.

And we can fix some of the messengers as well – some of those guys are just ridiculous.

My Dreams are Lazily Cast Aside by my Lazy Fears…Lazily

I feel like it is a fraud that anyone else reads this.  It is not upsetting, because it was supposed to be the essence of this.  I have a few corners of the internet I call my own, and this is my most relevant one at the moment.  

The world I live in follows a very clever formula.  There is the world I live in (mainly my house), and the world outside.  There is little interaction between the two.  I have made an insignificant impact on the greater world, the planet I live on, and according to my fears, that is perfectly fine.

My greatest dreams are not success or fame, but a greater impact on the world, leaving it a better place than I entered it in, and selfish happiness.  I have dreams of being in a band that is successful enough to sustain me, so I may be as creative and expressive as I hoped I could be, along with it being able to be something I could rely on for the occasional meal.  I have dreams of providing the world with clean water, or at least to be a part of a team or a project capable of doing this.  I don’t know how I would be able to pursue this at this point, seeing as I probably wouldn’t be able to get in the door at any organization who would be working on this.

This is lazy thinking, and also fueled by a fear of mine.  A fear I have never really recognized until recently, when I was making a phone call.  I was calling my girlfriend a couple days ago.  The phone rang twice, and an unfamiliar female voice answered seemingly in the middle of a sentence.  She said, “you can’t hear me,” and I didn’t hear anything else.  I hung up, and felt quite nervous.  I called my girlfriend right back, and got her voicemail.

I called her again later in the same evening, when another indistinguishable female voice answered.  I didn’t understand what she said before I hung up in a minor panic.  I called my girlfriend back, and she answered.  I talked to her and told her what happened.

I thought about what happened after I hung up my phone with her.  This was something that was not uncommon to me, and is not altogether uncommon.  When I was young, the tone preceding, and the operator’s mechanical voice that followed a misdialed or misconnected call always scared me.  One time I was playing Sonic the Hedgehog, and in the Spring Yard Zone I fell into a crevice.  Sonic then proceeded to disappear, the game froze, and text appeared on the screen. I don’t know what it said, because I was too busy freezing myself, then running for my life back to my room.  I didn’t even turn the game off.  20 years later I still remember this clearly, though I don’t remember much else from that time.

It is the fear of order being shaken that I am talking about.  It’s common enough.  It is something I never thought I was afraid of, but something that has been prevalent in my life forever.  It is the reason I ask questions like I did in a previous post, about aliens landing on Earth.  It is the fear of the disruption of order that drives most of those reservations of mine.  

It is also quite a lazy excuse for not trying to achieve my dreams, and not an viable one.  

It is also the reason I have sat for so long at my house, and not pursued anything greater.  Comfort, order, and laziness.

This is not who I want to be, nor is it what I wanted to ever be.  IF I could ever be successful, it requires that disruption of the world I see on the TV.  It requires me to not just be an audience member to the world as theater, but to be an actor; an active participant.  I need to be on the TV, not staring at it with fear of the show changing without my control.

The Grammys, Good…Bad…and Why Frank Ocean Will Win Best Album of the Year

I have been sitting on this idea for a while, maybe two months or so.  Initially I was planning on providing a scathing portrayal of the Grammys as one of the biggest farces in the farcical world of awards/awards shows, but doing a minute bit of last-minute research I have come to the conclusion that I will try to resist being too critical, as the Grammys really do feel similar in many ways to the Academy Awards, and though I watch the Academy Awards and avoid watching the Grammys, I can admit that they are both nearly equal in their vanity, their gross miscalculations, their presentations.

The Academy Awards, however, do not recreate scenes from the biggest action/big budget blockbusters of they year in between presenting awards in a desperate attempt to add viewers (though perhaps they should – wouldn’t that be interesting to watch).

In an effort to keep this brief and readable, and avoid becoming an essay from an unqualified critic on such matters that no one can support, I will keep my criticisms limited to Best Album of the Year, and Best New Artist.

Looking from the outside in, the Grammys have had the appearance of an organization desperately seeking respect or affirmation for many years.  This, I know, is a dangerous manner in which do judge something (gauging from a distance, with little perspective), and with most things I resist the temptation to do so, but with the Grammys it can be fairly simple to notice immediately the problems inherent.

Briefly, to get the small stuff out of the way:  KENDRICK LAMAR WAS NOT NOMINATED FOR A GRAMMY.  The Grammys have a tendency (which I find to be one of its most damaging characteristics) to completely fail its process of nominations.  I don’t know exactly what the process was, but to put it simply:  Kendrick Lamar’s debut album was not only one of, if not the best rap albums of the year, it was one of the best albums of the year period.  Not only was he not nominated as one of the best album nominees (Fun. was better?  Jack White?  Even The Black Keys, whom I like, were not better), but he was not nominated for best Rap Album (replaced by the great 2 Chainz, Rick Ross, and Lup-eh Fiasco, whom I also like, but was not impressed with his new album).  Nor was he nominated for Best Song. Or best Rap Song.

Kendrick Lamar wasn’t even nominated for Best New Artist (replaced – again, here – by Fun.).  I would like to point out right here two things.  First:  I like Fun.  My girlfriend was a fan of their lead singer, far more, when he was a member of The Format.  I like them, but again, to place them as an Album of the Year candidate over someone far more deserving, seemingly only because they have a far more popular album (they are also nominated for Song of the Year, along with “Call Me Maybe,” but that’s a different can of worms I’m trying to avoid) is one of the great mistakes the Grammys seem to make every year.

Also, putting a band like Fun. in the category of Best New Artist exposes a level of ineptitude in the Grammys that has disturbed me for years.  Fun. has been a band for at least five years, since The Format broke up.  They had released an album, previously, in 2009.  Now, with Some Nights as their “breakout success,” how is it possible for them to be declared a ‘New Artist’?  To make two analogies, it would be like nominating Adele as Best New Artist for “21″ (she won Best New Artist when she released “19,” which makes sense).  Or, it would be like an athlete having a breakout year in their fifth season in professional sports, and being nominated as “Rookie of the Year” award for doing so.  I can come up with many examples for that, but I’ve gone on too long already.

Really, the grave injustice of avoiding Kendrick Lamar completely, especially in a category the Grammys tries so exclusively to maintain their self-respect in (Esperanza Spalding) is reason alone to write a scathing article about the Grammys.  Yet, as I said at the beginning of this, this is not why I wanted to write this post necessarily.

It may seem like all I’ve done is attack the ineptitude of the Grammys as a failed institution for recognition in all fields of music, but really what I wanted to say is that all their failings have made it possible, at least for this year, to make the correct decision for Album of the Year, and it seems inevitable they will do so.

These past few months have been a boon for me musically.  No longer am I looking for music that merely sounds good, or something that can help me pass the time.  In recent years I have been looking for music that has a value greater for me than that, something that alters my life in a positive way.  I am thankful I am surrounded by people who know far more about music itself than I do, people that introduce me to music I would have never listened to on my own, though I try as much as I can.

Months and months ago my one friend kept telling me about Kendrick Lamar, and how great he is.  He showed me this video:

I was greatly impressed.  Still am by this.  When his album came out, I knew what to expect, and I was not disappointed.

My other friend, just a few months ago, introduced me to Frank Ocean’s Channel Orange.  I had heard of Frank Ocean vaguely for a few months before that, but never thought about him or his music much beyond that.  All I had heard was how great his album was, but it never provoked me enough to seek it out.  Honestly, I confused him constantly with Billy Ocean, only because I didn’t think too deeply about it, and I thought it was funny they had the same last name.

I respect my friend’s taste in music greatly, so on our way to band practice one night he began to play me some of Channel Orange.  After only hearing a few minutes of a couple songs, I demanded a copy (I’m sorry I haven’t bought your album yet Mr. Ocean, but I will definitely come to your show if you come to Cleveland).  I had a feeling at that time about this album that I hadn’t had for a long, long time about any other album.  I immediately heard this line pass through my head repeatedly, ‘This album has to be a part of my life.’

It sounds silly to say it that way, but from the musical selection, the manner of each song, its deliberate care seemingly placed in each moment of every song, the amazing vocal lines over the fantastic chord progressions, the intimacy and emotion in the inflection of his voice…this album is a wonder to listen to.  There is not a weak moment at any point in this album.

To avoid making this any ANY longer, I won’t do something silly like an album review.  All I will say now is why this album, as soon as I listened to it in that car that night, became a virtual guarantee to me to be the Album of the Year at the Grammys, before the nominations (and the…sigh…Nominations show/concert) were announced.

The first, and most prevalent point about Channel Orange, is its relative obscurity/popularity.  Though it sold rather impressively in its first week (131,000 copies, but outsold by the Zac Brown Band), it was not one of the top selling albums of the year.  It maintained almost a ‘sweet spot’ if you will of popularity and obscurity, where many may have heard it, but not all were buying it.  It’s almost like, to put it in a crass and hopefully humorous manner, a “hipster quotient” (quality and recognition of album on a scale of 1-10 divided by popularity of album on a scale of 1-10; the higher the number the greater value the album has) that would provide credibility on all fronts, positively, to any person or organization who recognized its merits (think Arcade Fire in 2011).

The quality of the album is important, but unfortunately not as important as the credibility provided to the Grammys by nominating an album like this one due to the “hipster quotient.” Nor is the quality of the album as valuable as the social importance of nominating someone who did what Frank Ocean did in 2012, publicly disclosing his sexual preferences.

As anyone who would read this knows already, admittance of sexual preference should not be a hindrance today, nor should it be a celebration.  It should honestly, at this point, merely be something that is accepted without any further consideration.  Unfortunately that is not the world we live in yet.  By simply telling the world who he is, Frank Ocean became a small champion of social and personal rights, probably through no intention of his own other than being true to himself.  It is unfortunate, but I believe this will be seen as an opportunity for an organization like the Grammys to improve their image, as it seems to be the case in many organizations looking to be pioneers for personal and social rights.  It is another opportunity for the Grammys to champion themselves as leaders in promoting social change and social acceptance, and I assume it will not be a chance they will pass up.

I believed, as soon as I heard it, that Frank Ocean’s Channel Orange would be Album of the Year at the Grammys, and essentially everyone I have spoken to agrees with me.  It is not merely because it was the best album of 2012.  It is unfortunately, mainly, because the motivations of the Grammys are their credibility.  They have proven in their past that they seek two things:  Popular and Cultural credibility, as those are the things that have seemed to have waned greatly for them for many years.

In the past few years alone it has seemed to be the goal of the Grammys to attain a greater level of respect by selecting winners of their awards through criteria that have very little to do with a musicians, or the merits of the albums themselves.  Frank Ocean appears to be the perfect storm for the Grammys yet again:  his obscurity/popularity, his direct/indirect social significance, and the quality of his album comprise a very convincing combination that, I feel, the Grammys will not pass up.

And it is greatly unfortunate that Channel Orange might become a casualty of this scenario, because it is truly the best album of 2012, and I believe Frank Ocean is one of the Best New Artists to come along in a long time.

Him and Kendrick Lamar.  It’s a shame they couldn’t have been nominated for Best New Artist.  That would have been a truly great competition.

The Loss of Distinction

Maybe this is my attempt to reconcile the idea that the title of this blog was conveying when I created it.  I’ve used the “Loss of Distinction” in the title of every avenue of media I’ve used on the internet, and I suppose I was correct, and ironically incorrect in my usage of it (or incorrect, yet ironically correct).  In any case, I’m about to write down a dumb idea I had a few days ago, one that everyone has had, one that no one needs to read about, yet I am writing anyway either as a poor attempt to claim it as valuable, or because I am bored, and feel like being very ironic.  In any case:  if you feel like reading something stupid, please continue.  If not, I don’t begrudge you if you leave this post.

What is the true estimation of our value as human beings in this society.  I know, it is such a valuable premise to begin a post about.  The more I thought about it though, the more I thought, however, it would be the perfect thing to waste time about on this blog.  After all, the notion I wanted to carry with this blog is that information has expanded beyond any belt loop, horizontally without control, and we don’t know how to reign ourselves in anymore.  Even if we did, we couldn’t at this point.  Maybe we could.  I hope we could.

Anyway – this old idea came to me when I was driving home from band practice (to re-iterate:  26, currently unemployed, living at home, in a band, writing blogs; I wouldn’t begrudge you if you left this post at this point either) when an old Kanye West song came on the radio.  Stronger, if I’m correct; either way, you know what song I’m talking about.

I thought about him, about his girlfriend, the interest they garner, and I thought to myself, what is their real value?  I imagine, if an apocalyptic event were to occur, and by some method we were only able to save the most valuable members of mankind, surely they wouldn’t be saved.  You might take some Kanye CDs with you, but you wouldn’t need him to come along, in case he has any more ideas for songs.  They don’t advance anything artistically; they aren’t entirely without innovation, but not enough for him to be necessary.  In short, Kanye entertains, but he is not necessary.

His girlfriend does nothing.  So there’s that.

If there were a cataclysmic event, I know I wouldn’t be saved; I haven’t provided any evidence that I should be.  I suppose the most important traits for the advancement of our species, those who hold those traits most exceptionally would be saved.  Biological, intellectual, organizational.  I’m sure it would be possible to store most of our blueprints for technology and innovation without needing most of those who were responsible for those innovations, but I’m sure we would still need some of them, if for nothing else but their minds.

But what innovations am I talking about?  And, what value am I talking about?  We have become so gluttonous with innovation that it is necessary for all of us to point out how uncontrollable it has become.  And assigning the value of a human being purely based on the traits necessary to advance the species sounds far too dark and narrow.

However, in this imagined scenario, our view would have to be narrow.  Save only those that would save what is the best of us.  Actors and most pop musicians would not be saved.  We all understand we use them merely as distractions, but we do not hold them to any real level of value in terms of our humanity as a whole.

If we did, the title of this blog would be truer than ever.  Though I lack faith in a lot of the world, I still have faith that this is not true.

Maintain perspective; there are so many things we need to understand about our time right now before we can begin to describe it.

Greg Catania Turns 59 Tomorrow, January 9th

Two thoughts really quick before I talk about my dad:  listening to Kendrick Lamar‘s new album, good kid, m.A.A.d. city, and it’s spellbinding.  It’s the best hip-hop album I’ve listened to since Fishscale.  Here’s a great review of it - read that first if you haven’t heard the album.  Or, if you have heard the album, read that review.  It’s great.  It’s good to get album reviews from AMG too.   They’re really great.

Also:  what if, at this very moment – we were contacted by aliens, or aliens landed on Earth.  Whatever you’re doing at this very moment:  doing dishes, folding clothes, watching TV; at this moment aliens landed.  How terrified would you be?  Also, would it be the most important thing that has happened to mankind since the Agricultural Revolution?  That’s something I can waste my time thinking about later.

…

Yesterday I was in the kitchen with my dad.  He was sitting at the table, looking through mail and cursing at bills.  I was making the chicken soup he usually makes whenever someone at our house is sick.  I’m the only one who isn’t sick, so I told him I would do it as long as he told me how.  He was more animated than he had been the past week – this virus he had was making everyone in my immediate family absolutely miserable, and it was no different for him.  I’ve taken stitches out of his head; I’ve seen him have trouble breathing every morning from arthritis and age when I used to wake up mornings for work; when he went to the hospital and had to stay overnight to be monitored for “heart problems,” we went to pick him up the next day and we found him waiting at the top of the parking garage next to the hospital.  When I say he is tough, I hope you understand.  Never have I seen or heard him complain about pain or sickness – this virus kept him bedridden for virtually a week.

It was nice to hear him sound more alive.  The soup ended up being better than I expected (read: palatable), and I was satisfied.  He went up to the soup and reached for seconds.  I said to him, “Hey, your birthday’s in two days.  Excited right” heavy with sarcasm.  Ever since I remember he hasn’t had a party for his birthday.  We usually order a pizza, some root beer, and watch TV.  Maybe we get him a card.  But at least in his mood I thought he would be sarcastic in response, and we would continue to be happy.

He said, in as quietly a tone as I have ever heard him take, “Yeah,” and the conversation ended there.

There have been difficult times in the past 17 years, ever since my mom passed away and he moved back in with us at our current home to take care of us.  As far as I can remember though, I remember a man who always tried to do the best thing possible for the people he loved the most.  There have been times when he has failed at that, as we all do.  But there were many other times when he has succeeded, far more than any other person I remember in my life.

He divorced my mom when I was very young – five years old.  For five years he was not a part of the home that my sister and I lived in, the home we live in now.  When my mom passed away, he came to take care of us:  not to save the home, but to make sure we didn’t have to leave where we had – mostly – grown up.  My mom and dad divorced before we moved to that home; it was never his.

I’m not writing this for sympathy, nor am I writing it to gain sympathy for my dad.  I’m writing this to illustrate how much different life was before he came back to this house.  Now, after 17 years, he is this house.  He is its center:  there is no family here, no “home” to come back to without him in it.  When I was about 19 or 20, I struggled with identities in every aspect of my life, as we all do.  It was very Garden State I suppose (though I have never seen it).  What is “home,” and what is “family?”  For me, as I write this, I understand only that this place, this place I live now, is home only if he is here.  He is the emotional, physical center of our family.  We (my sister, my stepmother and I) all love him, we feed off his warm sense of humor, and if he were not here, at this home, we wouldn’t be either.

He also still pays for the home, and I’m broke.  Which is also why I’m still here.

I feel guilty every day knowing I should be better than what I am.  I know I cannot complain, I know I cannot be lazy, and I know I can never settle for less because of what my dad has taught me.

Long ago, when he was in high school, he was a great artist; sculpter, carver.  I believe he even won an award for one of his carvings while in high school.  He always had a great talent for drawing, for sculpting, but never did anything with it.  He made a stand out of a wooden log that I remember, carved deep in its entire side an old man with a thick, diving mustache and a horned nose.  I can still remember his face, though I have not seen that stand in at least 15 years because he gave it to our cousin, who loved it so much and still has it.  He kept a large log outside the house, years ago, for over a year, saying he was going to “do something with it.”  I still wonder how amazing that log could have been, if he did “something” with it.

When I came back home from Michigan in August, and even before that, my dad and I had talks.  Talks about life, talks about what I would do.  He believed (and still believes) I am “gifted” enough to do whatever it is I truly want to do with my life.  He sat me down, very seriously when I came back home at the same table he curses at bills, and asked me what I want to do with my life.  What do I really want to do?  I was embarrassed to say what I really wanted to do.  I want to try to play music, with my band if possible, and be a writer.  Dreams that, I know, are far-fetched, if fetched at all.

He didn’t laugh; he didn’t scoff.  He didn’t get upset.  He took me seriously.  His next question was how – how would I get there?  He told me that this – this right now was my time, my chance to make this happen.  I’m home, he promised to keep a roof over my head, he promised me the time I needed.  It was my job to find the proper way to make this dream of mine happen, because he didn’t want me to live my life “with any regrets.”

I imagine he didn’t have a conversation like this with his dad.  I remember my grandfather; he was not the most kindhearted man.  He hated my mom.  By the time my dad was my age, he was already an ironworker.  That, or he was working in a grocery store, living above a bar.  The only conversation he told me about him and his father having was the time when his father found a stash of his – dramatic pause – marijuana!  My grandfather said, “You know what happens to people when they smoke this??  I had a friend who tried this stuff and he went insane!”

My dad, very tactful in his repsonse:  ”That must’ve been some good shit.”

My uncles had to hold my grandfather back.

I don’t know what regrets my dad was talking about when we talked, but I can imagine a few possibilities.  Lost loves most likely.  It is sad to think there were things he wanted to do, but was never able to find the time to do.

He is turning 59 though, and with great hope he will have at least 30 more healthy years to find some peace – something he wanted the most, but could never find.