"... but in reality, nothing is more damaging to the adventurous spirit within a man than a secure future. The very basic core of a man's living spirit is his passion for adventure. The joy of life comes from our encounters with new experiences, and hence there is no greater joy than to have an endlessly changing horizon, for each day to have a new and different Sun."
-- From a letter by Chris McCandless to his friend Ron Franz, March 1992.
It never fails that I figure things out long before I realize I have them figured out. I'll always get lyrics to some song I haven't heard in ages or a quote from some book I read forever ago stuck in my head. If it's a song that little snippet will be stuck on loop... sometimes for days. It's not there constantly but if I let myself drift off then it will usually pop up. Eventually I'll figure out what my unconscious brain is trying to tell me and once I figure it out it kind of dissipates into thin air as if to say, "Christ. It took you long enough, Ted. Now I can finally stop singing this stupid fucking song."
I've had pieces of this quote running through my mind for the last few days. Today after I spent a good deal of time laying around, sleeping, playing video games and basically doing nothing while trying to figure out why I feel so detached and depressed I realized what my little brain was telling me: I'm too comfortable and the future planning I've been doing lately is only adding to the possibility that this comfort might be sustained. This will lead to me sucking as a human being.
See, I function at an optimal level when I have crises happening in my life. For some reason I can't enjoy anything unless I'm convinced it could all burn at any moment. I love my life the most when I can honestly fear death. I live to struggle. I really believe that all of life is suffering and I'm honestly ok with that. When I'm not suffering or struggling; When everything is in its right place; When things are falling in line exactly like I want them to I just shut down. I get bored and I fall asleep.
Along with that quote that's been running through my head, I've found myself thinking about wolves lately. Not in a "Dear Diary, today I thought about wolves and then painted a sunset" kind of way... I haven't gone that far off the deep end. What I've been thinking about is how wolves are born to hunt and kill. They are instinctual predatory animals. They have purpose. I think about that and I think about how all anyone had to do was give these animals a dish full of food and a warm place to sleep and they became docile and cuddly. What's more, they eventually just become apathetic and give in to sleep.
My life is a dog's life. I've never had to worry about my next meal. I've often had the privilege of being able to complain about how I'm bored. If you have a dog take a look at it. That mound of fur piled on top of itself, sleeping in some corner, or licking it's balls is me. That's my life. If you've got the time to sit around reading this garbage it's probably your life too. It's my parents falling asleep in front of the news at 7:30 every night. It's every son of a bitch that ever raised hell until the he shacked up and started having dinner waiting for him when he got home from work. Now he just wants to watch tv and go to bed.
We're bored. And it's not because we don't have enough to do. It's because we have too much. We're fed. We're kept. We have television, the internet, piles of books and records, friends on demand via cellphone, myspace, etc. And all of it we take for granted. And all that stuff that we think will make our lives better just makes life worse. It makes you docile, boring, and bored. Boring boring boring boring spoiled rotten kids. All of us.
I'm disgusted with myself and with my life. My life feels like a waste. I feel like I'm going nuts because the handful of people I've made any mention of this to have looked at me like I'm crazy. Maybe I am crazy. I know one thingthough: This feeling is nothing new and it's not planning on going away anytime soon. I really think Chris McCandless had the right idea returning himself to the wild and I really wish I had the balls to do something similar... or at least something that will help me find some REAL reason to want to do anything. A dog can learn to hunt again if it has to. A dog can remember that it was once a wolf... even if it was born domesticated. I really believe that.
For the time being I'm at least looking forward to going back on tour. Even if it isn't the kind of trip I have in mind it will at least be a temporary fix. On tour you go just hungry enough to appreciate your next meal. On tour you learn to be miserable for the right reasons. It sounds so backwards but it's just such a good reminder that life is more than sitting around jerking off and waiting for the phone to ring.
I'm working on a song about this called Nausea. I'll have lyrics and a little more explanation about how it ties into the God Complex record in a few days.
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3 comments:
This is something I've been wrestling with a lot recently.
I kind of hate comparing myself and my experiences to anyone else - both because of the potential reaction from the person I'm comparing myself to, and the fact that I've always tried to measure my actions against nothing but my own standards and convictions - but I've really been able to relate to some of the things you've written here (in this entry, and previous ones.)
I have to imagine that at best these are written to the people reading - because they're certainly not written for them - but regardless I want to thank you for putting these here. These entries have touched on subjects that probably would have taken me a little too long to figure out for myself, and while they haven't provided complete answers, they pushed my thoughts along enough that I've been able to keep myself where I need to be while I get the rest figured out.
All of this probably sounds pretty schmaltzy at this point, but whatever.
So many things i love about this entry particulary the mention of Satre who i'm a massive fan of.
My Grandmother always used to say to me "Only boring people get bored" when i would complain, and that is true. We live in a world of plenty more now so than EVER before but yet everyone is always bored.
I mean on the news yesterday they were saying about thought controlled games which i no doubt will become a certainity in a few years. I mean really! George Orwell must be turning in his grave!
I love the part about how you think life is sufferring, it's a very Buddhist way to look to at things but it is completely true. You get fucked over every single day of your life, but all you can do is just detach yourself from it all & find beauty in nature. Because that will never let you down. But what man made, man can destroy & that unfortunately includes beauty & the overwhelming desire for life, which has been eradicated by the ever-present ease of attaining anything at any time from Amazon.com haha
I very nearly got stuck in the middle of Germany the other day on the mammoth trek back from Pressure fest, and i can honestly say i have never felt more alive. The next week i was in a car crash on the way back from seeing Comeback Kid, it wasn't very dramatic but i just kept on thinking "...if that was worse, i could of died" and that really fucked me up lol.
I mention this because everyone wanst to do everything but the massive fear of something going wrong stops us, our hunting instinct is extinguished by conscience.
To quote Shakespere "Conscience makes Cowards of us all"
x
Have you ever read any Douglas Coupland? He's pretty cool. There's a book called Girlfriend in a Coma where a girl goes to sleep and when she wakes up, it's the future and we've become the type of people who can afford to be bored and are constantly, like you describe in your post, due to how accessible things are.
'I remember when I first woke up how people kept on trying to impress me with how efficient the world had become. What a weird thing to brag about, eh? Efficiency. I mean, what's the point in being efficient if you're only leading an efficiently blank life?' (p. 214)
There's a bit from a book I'm reading for my dissertation that stood out as well, 'Desire is no longer about forbidden areas of life, but rather having the space to put things.'
Sad times yet we're to blame.
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