Category Archives: Self-Helping

(thinking) you need help but not accepting it

in some ways, when it comes to certain things (saying “which ones” might elucidate this greatly, but I’ll get to that)

I sometimes feel like I am surrounded by
A. a buncha people whom I do not trust and whom claim to have (and seem to have) All the Answers (i.e, these people can take care of themselves and don’t seem to have any obvious maladaptions, so so speak (nice word, “maladaptions.” I just made it up:)

and

B. a buncha other people whom I DO trust, but are as lost as me.

all of my CRAZY artist friends (crazy like me) the ones who are REALLY close to me….
they have all the same challenges, more or less.

and those who are different, who really seem to have their lives in order….

when I ask these people for advice, including my life coach…
I inevitably come away hurt and self-judging, as if I won’t accept their advice, because it’s “not me” even though what “IS” me either doesn’t work, or I haven’t tired hard enough, usually the latter. which-
does give hope.

perhaps

perhaps I just need to learn to not take things too seriously when I disagree, and just let some things go,
EVEN WHEN

my defenses are down, and
I am frustrated and seeking help, and
grumble grumble.

The Hurt Locker, 1

the ideas in this post need clearer explanation. I’ll get to that some time.

A post about the film THE HURT LOCKER.
SPOILER ALERT! DON’T READ THIS till you SEE IT!!
seriously!




ready? ok.

the first time I saw the end, when he goes back… I felt what I imagine was intended, kinda shock and horror at how a man could become addicted to the adrenaline rush that they feel in a war.

but every time since,

I have felt, shall we say, something else.

as he is walking in slow motion, and then it jump cuts to him in the suit… with that super loud THRASH music…

I feel who is anyone to judge anyone for what is best for them in life…

there are things about life that I love very much (not war, no.)
sometimes, as in the case of The Dude from The Big Lebowski….
sometimes there’s a man… and… he’s the man, for his time and place.

ADHD is not “addiction, for one.
I am not addicted to war, no.
but there are things that I find “highly stimulating.”
fortunately, for me, they are mostly music, not some ‘foreign substance, i.e, a drug” that I put in my system.

nobody can tell me, nor indeed anyone,
that they shouldn’t be this way, that they shouldn’t get “what they need”, in “their” amount and in a way of “their” choosing. (albeit, if it’s really drugs we are talking about, and I’m not sure it is…. it might or might not change the equation.

I mean, is adrenaline a drug?

is developing tolerance for things, adrenaline included, bad?

who’s to say?
(this is why a film wins best picture, in ambiguities like these.)

certainly not “normal people.” anymore than someone different is to say that “normal people” are doing it wrong. though, we may often think so, I certainly do.

All I am saying is that when I see Sgt. James walking in Iraq, in slow motion at the end of the film…. in the suit….

having nothing to do with America, or War or anything… Edmund, I didn’t take any pro or anti-us stuff from the film, was on a different level for me, as you can see)

I felt empowered. very very VERY MUCH.

to this day, I get a BIG rush in that last scene (see above… it’s High Stimulation.)

not because of war. I was against our invasion or Iraq.

because sometimes people need to do what’s right for THEM, regardless of how it might appear to others.

this is why a film wins best picture. because of ambiguities like these.

In High Stimulation we trust.

p.s. this is all about MUSIC, and MY FEELING that people have often not been in sync with, not understood, my tastes, and the comparatively extreme nature of my musical tastes, to others’.

I love Wagner, West African Drumming of various kinds, Minimalism by Steve Reich and Philip Glass, James Brown, Jazz, and many other things too.

sometimes I like to hear the same thing over and over for hours.
sometimes I hear the same thing over and over in MY HEAD, automatically, for hours.
sometimes I love playing music for hours…. sometimes I like doing it until I’m dead tired and can’t drive home (but have to anyway… coffee…)

High Stimulation Music is life. for me.

so again, this post was not about war… it was about me, and music, which somehow, I saw in the last scene of the Hurt Locker.

(Incidentally, there are Tritones in the chords of this music…. pimp)

ADDITIVE CLEANING

welcome to PROGRESSIVE CLEANING, or EXPONENTIAL cleaning…
or maybe just ADDITIVE cleaning…
where, every time I walk from the bed area across the room towards the bathroom or fridge (no kitchen, but got a fridge)
I throw out ONE piece of clutter on the way.
next time I go over (which is often 30 or less seconds later…)
two>
then three.
up to 7 today. that is 7+6+5+4+3+2+1
and yes, my place is a mess, but at this rate it won’t be some time soon.
party at Casa de Robbins when that happens.
(no.)

Topic Begin: PRESENTATION AND IMAGE

there are several reasons but ONE of them is
when people TALK and ACT like professionals, and yet, in truth, they turn out to be full of shit, and a shit-ton less competent than me, who despises talking and acting professional.
I was deeply offput, (sp!) more than once, when I saw some percussionist long ago, many many years, who presented themselves like that, and as principle percussion of so and so symphony (a tiny tiny one in a tiny tiny town, it turns out.)
I was frankly “offended” by them, and the musical director, when they allowed this person to play the same pieces I had played, and they played them way less well than I did.
I was more offended that they presented themselves in this way when they were not deserving of it.
a clear elevation of presentation and image over substance.
I say again
a clear elevation of presentation and image over substance.
UN-ACCEPTABLE!!!!!!!!!
I wonder how much of “the root” of my revulsion against normalcy, presentation, image, and professionalism, this particular incident played.
(it can’t have been all that much, the roots of those things in me go back to the 70s.)