Hey. So I will be starting to write my prelim in about a month or so and I need to get back into the habit of writing. As it was right about the time of my masters, blogging will be my creative outlet. So, read on if you want, but don’t be disapointed if there is little of merit!
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I get the feeling sometimes that I enjoy surreal experiences more then I should. More, in any case, then others do. I love the feeling in my gut that this is not right. I don’t mean something like pigs flying, though that would not be right. What I love to experience are juxtapositions of what I’m sensing, thinking, and feeling. I suppose an example is more appropriate.
I’ve started walking to work in an effort to toughen up my feet. It takes me a little over an hour so my mp3 player has become much more important in my life. I dug it out of my electronics box to play to books on tape but there is music on it still and I have found I am listening to it far more then I thought. Better yet, some of the music is not my own. Ok, so maybe it is but don’t judge me.
Ace of Base, All that she wants: I started my player up as I left my office and realized I needed a pit stop before starting the journey home. I walk into the restroom, start doing my thing, and suddenly realize that I am in a restroom, standing in front of a urinal, and grooving to All That She Wants. I start imagining the lead singer walking out of one of the stalls, the door to the handicap stall opening up to reveal the drummer, and the camera drawing back from behind my head and panning across the room as I zip up and walk over to the sinks. This at least, is what my brain is thinking. My eyes though are seeing the same tile wall and chrome fixtures, my body is going through the same actions and motions. And yet despite being the same it is new. Very cool.
Music has a wonderful ability to trigger these experiences because it is such an emotionally charged medium. Something as boring and routine as urinating suddenly has this emotional component that your, well, my brain just doesn’t know how to deal with. Emotion is the key I think. Kind of like a person with Capgras Delusion, my brain rejects reality and assumes its some play put on for my benefit.
It happens with more then just music though. A week ago I was reading something I had written about 4 years ago when I realized I actually liked it. I liked something I had written! And then I remembered writing it and I sat there, reading, remembering writing, and enjoying the piece when my brain literally took a step back for a moment. It was as though my brain was saying “I’m not going to mark this down as real but lets still see where this goes.”
Maybe the closest feeling is lucid dreaming. I used to have this dream all the time where I would be standing on a cliff overlooking a large oak-like tree that was missing all of it’s leaves. I’d then step off the cliff, cross my legs indian style and proceed to glide back and forth and around the tree. It wasn’t scary (I’m terrified of heights) and it wasn’t terribly exciting it just was and at the same time wasn’t. My mind decided to dip its toe in the situation but not to jump in head first.
When I was in Yosemite with some friends from college last year we took a break for lunch after hiking out to the North Dome. Words can’t convey the magisty of the place. It felt like I could walk off dome, cross my legs, and ride the wind.. To sit there eating lunch and shooting the shit with my best friends from college with the half dome on our left and all of Yosemite Valley laid out before us felt, I guess, surreal.
I’ve
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