Personal Archaeology

Please give the songs I uploaded another listen if you like. I got some new equipment and the recording is more than 100% improved:

What Is Man?
Saturday “Serenade”

Last night, while washing the dishes, I saw something dart across the floor out of the corner of my right eye. It moved very much like I would imagine a mouse would move… gah!

Today, I informed the management association that I have a mouse and then went to buy a trap. I briefly considered looking for a live-catch trap but to be completely honest, it’s a freakin’ mouse.

However, I saw the little guy face to face tonight while cleaning some things up that have been lying against the wall for quite some time now. I think that this mouse was camping out in my bedroom! I don’t know how long he’s been around, though the fact that I used to have a cat living in this apartment tells me that it probably moved in sometime after the cat moved out.

I did feel a moment of compassion for the little beast… but at the end of the day… it’s a freakin’ mouse. So I moved the trap into the bedroom and set the cardboard up so that there are no byways against the wall. I’m hoping that we can have an expired mouse shortly and that he’s a loner.

Saturday afternoon “Serenade”

Download MP3
1.6M 2:19

I’m not quite skillful enough to play this all live… this is three tracks mixed together.

I’ve been pondering the idea of a song based on On Truth for a while, but the songs usually came out very angry. Not that the anger isn’t justified in some way, but if it’s coming out unconsciously like that, that’s not something I want to release… I want any music I produce to inform, not inflict.

I came up with some lyrics to another tune that talk about the “tyranny of illusion” and I think that one has potential, but it’s still a work in progress.

I came up with this tune on Tuesday after a chat where Stef and another board member were discussing a possible style to the lyrics that this particular member had written. Stef was suggesting something bluesy, specifically something like John Lee Hooker.

I noticed that it was in a major key but was so, so sad… the tune I came up with is kind of an inversion. It’s minor, but it’s not so completely sad as minor keys are wont to be.

I’m calling it, for now, “What Is Man?”

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0.7M 0:59

Download MP3
22.3M 32:33

I was writing tonight (a distinct departure from my activities most nights) and, in writing about an early childhood experience, I found that I was defending my mother in the actions that she took. When I realized this, I started to feel anger… and this anger began to increase, and it kept increasing even as I continued to write. My writing grew more rapid and pointed and more difficult to read until finally I wrote this:

Immediately upon writing this, I felt deep sorrow and just went with it… and then I began to see how this thread runs throughout my life and just about everybody I’ve been close to.

And lately, I’ve been doing just about everything but the most obvious thing, in just about all of the areas I want to address.

Now, being 29 and having been in FDR for over a year now, that’s mea culpa. It’s not like this is a unique revelation to myself, but it’s just about the first time in my life that it has ever become anything remotely approaching emotional relevance for me…

Thanks for reading.

Greg pointed out to me that my post late last night (Searching for Therapy) rang of an emotional trap.

I’ve been feeling pretty depressed lately and hopeless and frustrated and angry and a whole bunch of “negative” emotions. I think that it could be my work situation, it could be the therapist thing, it could be a number of things… but I haven’t sat down to ask myself exactly why.

I don’t really feel up to providing all of the details at the moment but I did want to apologize to my readers for the emotional trap. I’m not nearly so hopeless and helpless.

I’ve been spending at least some time looking for a therapist. I’m finding it pretty difficult, but not for any surface emotion that I can determine.

I’m trying to pay very close attention to how I feel when listening to the prospective therapist’s voice. If and only if I am comfortable will I then move on to a consultation.

So far… no consultations yet.

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Experience of Practical Anarchy (also here) by Stefan Molyneux

It took me a long time to get around to reading Practical Anarchy. It wasn’t because I thought I knew everything there was to know in the book… it was just never “the right time.” I just never felt like it.

I had actually almost completed the book but had stopped at some point before the conclusion. In listening to the audio book to completion last night, I discovered that I had stopped only very shortly before the conclusion.

I didn’t ask myself why I was avoiding it, and there might be reasonable excuses why: I’m still processing (and will be for some time) the breakup of a 4+ year relationship; I want to get into therapy soon but haven’t found a therapist yet; I have concerns about my job, my career, my weight… I have a very, very hard time thinking about creating the sort of job I actually want, content instead to spend my evenings wasting my time instead of working.

After a conversation with Stefan about what FDR is compared to how I currently behave in relation to FDR, I began to think more about what it is that’s missing for me. I realized that I feel completely hollowed out–not quite that I don’t have any value, but that I don’t ever create value for others, in others, through what I do.

The followup to this was a conversation with a friend of mine who has had his own issues this past week and was very, very down on himself. I felt that, as my friend, I either “owed” him the feedback he requested or, at least, “owed” him an honest response as to why I wasn’t providing it.

It was after that conversation that I finally got back to Practical Anarchy.

The book is full of brilliant and insightful responses to the many questions and criticisms about how anarchy can work in the myriad practical contexts we find ourselves in. Questions about the roads, healthcare, crime, and so on are all given a treatment, with regular reminders that we should compare anarchy to the current situation, not to some unattainable ideal.

However, the soul of the book is in the conclusion.

Providing possible answers to the questions of anarchy is an interesting and, I would argue, essential intellectual exercise, for if alternatives are at least provided, that can help some people get over the intellectual challenges of anarchy, even if the alternatives themselves never quite pan out. This, however, is not what Practical Anarchy is about, not at its core.

To really understand what it is that makes the title of the book mean more than “How Anarchy Can Be Practical in a Society Ages Away,” I strongly urge you to read the book through and pay close attention to the conclusion. I highly recommend the free audio book, but there is also a free PDF version and, at the time of this writing, a paperback copy for $18.98 at lulu.com.