Been A Long Time

I'm not sure who still checks in on my ramblings here on this site -- with the predominance of Facebook and its inter-connectivity, content on sites like Blogger just has no legs. However, for me, Blogger still serves as an archive of my published writings, and frankly, due to the bare-naked quality of these musings, I rather prefer that not everyone in my FB circle reads it.

Anyway, I have an hour before my lunch break, I'm comparatively sober, and emotionally detached. So I thought I'd do my best to write a little summary of where I feel I'm at within the scope of my life-dream.

Ya'll know I love music and have thrown myself at music with an all-eclipsing love. I dance better than ever. Once recently, at a Primus concert in fact, I asked my date (who was of cuban decent) if she knew Salsa - well, she's also Korean, Native American, and Caucasian, and so she said she did not...even though she can rave for two days straight. So in demonstration, I took only her one finger, did two steps to put her in the rhythm, and then turned her only using that one little finger. And I mean she snapped a 360 like I'd thrown a round-house kung-fu kick. I was quite proud of my energetic abilities.

To which, I might add: I'm in the best shape of my life. It continues to astound me every day the utter catastrophe of my childhood. I am shocked and beside myself that nobody recognized the awful trauma that derailed my physical maturation. I guess I didn't even really know myself, and so I never told anybody. It just happened so insidiously, one event leading to another, until one day I recognized that all the boys around me had grown big and strong while I was still sallow and weak. By this time and finding myself in another ridiculous predicament of abuse, I opted to let my father intervene, but the results were so humiliating that I vowed never to ask his help again.

Anyway, I am something of a celebrity in the local park, as my methods for correcting this past damage are an unusual-looking combination of gymnastics, martial arts, dance, yoga, and endurance exercise. Kids always want to come over and watch me and ask me what the heck I'm doing. Truly the highlight of my weeks usually are the conversations I have in the park with children and adults alike. The people of the world are good people.

I don't know the word to describe the feeling I have when contemplating this physical recovery of myself. To get here, I pretty much gave up everything of my former life. It's as if all those friends and lovers were in my life, willing to love me as the weak pathetic Greg...but when I stepped up and said I want to be more, they all shook their heads and said, "Well, then, that is our cue to be moving on."

Naturally, Rhonda probably best represents the energy of this migration, for she too is no longer in my life. But when I think about her, I can hear her saying, "Greg, we taught you all we could - the rest you have to do on your own."

So, I am amazed, like truly amazed at the profound mechanics and depth of life. I remember clearly that day in late 2005...I had been invited to Mitchel Snary's birthday party, at some bowling alley in Hollywood. He was still working in the movie industry, so I knew everybody at the party would be looking good and balling. I hadn't worked at a "normal" job in over a year, and frankly the time I had spent working I was stoned and just slipping through the cracks. So I remember, I got my favorite poor-boy meal from El Pollo Loco and hiked up to a favorite spot in Griffith Park. I remember thinking, on the way, "Fuck. I am depressed, my whole life has gone wrong." which is normal I suppose, but the intensity of the feeling was greater than ever before in my life. I couldn't remember ever feeling that way before that moment.

When I got to the top of the mountain, I smoked a joint, played on my drum for about 5 minutes before I just collapsed. Stoned, I then had an experience in which I felt that I died. Heck, if you go back through this blog, you can probably find the fresh description of the experience.

Anyway, what time has shown me is that this experience, although obviously "just-in-my-head" was altogether real. From that time, the only people I still have in my life are my family. Curiously, my old friend Caleb, my first co-worker friend in LA from 1996 made the hyper-space jump and is still around.

What is curious about that, actually, is that I met Caleb before the Sandra Chapter splintered all of my momentum into pieces. So he knew that young head-in-the-clouds, sky-is-the-limit Greg who had known no defeats in his adult life. As of late, I do feel a reversal in many ways. As if (like in time travel stories) some force outside the present tried to alter the path of my destiny, but despite said efforts, the impetus of the universe has eventually brought my life back around to its original path. So before I return to the subject of my love of energetic qualities of dance and music, let me digress:

My life in LA began in Burbank with my Aunt and Uncle (another coincidence, I work just down the street from their old house), but my personal life began in Pasadena, El Molino St. So let's add another layer of irony: Through FMG, I have come be accepted as an older friend to a generation of Pasadena kids. Hahaha, they were all like 5-7 years old when I moved to LA, but nevermind that. They are now the age I was when I came to LA.

I can't help but live vicariously through them - I imagine the life of youth, boredom, and frustration that I never had due to my engagement to Sandra and choosing an altogether CRAZY path.

Perhaps choice is not the right word. As I said, the trauma of my childhood had me so ill-prepared to achieve my dreams that life simply had to send me on a few GED courses to get me up-to-speed.

So what I'm saying is that I feel reborn. I feel as if I've been given a second chance to "land" in Los Angeles and live my dream. I fight an insane amount of bitterness though, because I realize now that there is no "better" path in life. Even though I was "traumatized" and all that jazz, EVERYBODY is similarly traumatized. None-the-less, there is a love story for everyone, no matter their sad childhood. My love story, between the extremes at which I experienced it, from Leticia to Liz, with honorable mentions to Holly, Cynthia, and even Sandra, was better than a guy could ever hope for. It leaves me angry at myself for having been unable to appreciate in the moment the sweetness of it. It leaves me fearful of myself, because in fact, I did appreciate the sweetness of it, and somehow through an equation of emotional mathmatics far too complicated for me to ever understand, it...played itself out -- and I wonder, is that simply the way of love? That thought leaves me cold and afraid to love again, which ices the whole process. I know I must love again, regardless. I must love again to live again, I must love again.

When I get into a self-reflective state-of-mind like this, actually I see the advantage I have in being older now. As a young person, you are such a target of fantasy. Everybody wants a piece of you in your 20s. But in your 30s, nobody really bothers - first of all, they can tell that you've already been around the block and probably recognize their schemes...secondly, they are worried that you might be crazier than they are.

So I have WAAAAAY more psychic space than I did in my 20s, which is probably the single most irritating thing I can remember about those years: I always felt this insane crunch on my time, which is why I never wanted to spend time at a job working. Because by the time I finished working, then finished necessarily hanging out with friends and lovers, there was almost no time left for ME. However, these days, work is my saving grace. Without work, I probably would go completely insane. Funny how things change. If I'd just known that my 30s would be a totally different dynamic, perhaps I could have just settled into my 20s? A person could lose their minds thinking about shit like this...

But it doesn't bother me so much any more - nothing like it used to. One, I have a good job, and having resources is not to be under-valued. Two, my employers are reasonable people. We have even had discussions about allowing me a 4-6 week leave-of-absence. So, in the meantime, it's about getting my creativity in a position to take advantage of such a break. And finally, three, although I have something of a social life, I do not have a girlfriend or a wife. My family, ah, well, suffice to say, they are 2000 miles away, and even then I have limited their involvement in my life...which is something I will analyze more later.

In sum, I have manifested for myself pretty much exactly what I thought I wanted: Space, time, and the freedom to be a great artist.

Which brings me back to love of music. I'm not sure why I love music so much - I am rather shocked and repulsed by the "music scene". I am even horrified at making a career of performance, just because it is so damned hard to do and so unappreciated generally...I mean, during my 15 years of watching live acts, I find that generally I am the only one really stepping up and getting involved with (as I heard Robert Moog say recently) "the on-the-spot community formed by live music". So, uh, people, if I'm on stage - who in the audience has got my back??

Actually until recently, this was the least of my worries. Just having material and being able to play well enough not to get booed off the stage has been my sole focus for 10 years. However, 6 months ago, I bought my first electric bass, and my music world is changed. I can fucking shred time and space with the bass. Yes, Ms.L, if you ever read this, you can pat yourself on the back for planting the seed in my mind - the talent and perseverance? lol, yah, well, I'll be taking credit for that.

I think the reason the bass comes so naturally is that (although most of you might not believe it) I can sing my dang head off. Smoking has dramatically increased my lung capacity by necessitating deeper breathing (you kill off the upper reaches of your lungs and you simply learn to breath deeper to continue living...until you reach the bottom of your lungs, at which point you have emphysema and then have to use an oxygen tank, daaaang, ain't technology sweeet?). Greater breath control = greater singing ability. It's all very simple. (Except for the addictive qualities and tendency to smoke way too damn much...lol) Anyway, singing is melodic in nature, meaning you sing only one note at a time and then proceed to the next note - bass is the same way for the most part. Although I dearly love ripping a bass power chord progression and knocking down a couple walls in China >:D

So bass has opened up a whole new level of confidence and possibility. I don't know what the next stage is, except that I'm hungry for more sonic power, not just volume, but riding a bigger wave, as could only be created by playing with other musicians. With bass I finally feel like there is a place for me in practically any band. I may be suffering from cocky ignorance of what a "real" bass player is capable of doing, but I sort of feel that I have a funky-ass groove that could transform any band from a bland top-40 oriented effort into a dub-stepping desert-rave-crushing modern-era-Grateful-Dead. Well, I'm in no hurry - the more time that passes, the better I get.

So I'm totally stoked about music. I can't help but hope that this is my chance to live the dream of playing and touring and all that biz. But we will see. I have been told by my spirit guides that it takes "lifetimes" to get to that level. So I recognize that in this life music will probably be yet another exciting chapter en route to the dream.

Now art and drawing is something else. I honestly feel myself to be a modern master. However, I am indignant, indignant I tell you at not being recognized. Yes, I understand curators are not going to chase me or beat down my door, and so I have been working on a body of work worthy of a gallery. When I am ready, I will find the right gallery. However, frustratingly, each new piece I do outshines the previous, so although I have done hundreds of incredible drawings, I feel only about 5 of them are truly epic. Plus, in order to present in that type of space, I need to do a lot of work on each piece to make it appear worth thousands.

For which I need money, and although I have been making great money for almost 4 years, the debt I accumulated while making my career change has been disabling me up until recently when I finally paid off the last of my outstanding taxes. My financial obligation to Liz's health care is also resolved - so as of the next paycheck, I will finally be able to pocket all of my profit.

First things first - I need a new computer. My baby, my beautiful warrior laptop - that Compaq Presario has been begging me to die for well over 2 years, and God Bless her, she held on because she knew I couldn't afford a new computer. But now I can, and SO CURIOUSLY now she has collapsed and is basically RIP.

Once I have the new computer, I'm hoping a bunch of creative endeavors will become easier, including: 1) just being able to chill with the ENTIRE music collection instead of whatever I can cram onto the iPhone at one time, 2) migrating jams from my iPhone to my site for sharing purposes, 3) working up my best art pieces to a gallery-ready finish, 4) I have a fabulous idea for re-telling the Peter Pan story, and I want to write that in my spare time (impossible to write with that sticky, crash-causing keyboard), and (take a nice deep breath ya'll), 5) FINISHING KINGNITRAM.com!!

Since starting on this journey, I have built the entire game engine THREE times. Yes, that is basically the entire original King Nitram site, rebuilt 3 times - that doesn't include major revisions, of which there were at least 2-3 on each version. Each time done faster and with more knowledge of how to properly build such an application.

This time I have put aside Flash/AS3 entirely and invested in the standards PHP/MySQL -> HTML/JS/CSS, which I believe will remain standards for years to come. Plus, with the professional expertise I have acquired, I am confident that this iteration is modular enough to drive nearly any client-side revision of the architecture. What I'm saying is THIS IS IT. I'm building this version to launch and scale. I have a huge group of young Facebook-using friends - if the idea ever had any merit at all, they will adopt it, and from there, it will peter out, or it will explode. Either way, I will be soooo relieved to be free of that whole "punk genius" escapade.

One curious thing to note, Mark Zukerberg was writing the first version of Facebook at the same time I was writing the first version of King Nitram. It is reassuring to know that, without knowing, I was very much right in-sync with the social consciousness. Naturally I could never have been the guy to write Facebook in 2004 - but that wasn't my goal. I never imagined myself to be at the helm of such a mainstream social engine. KingNitram always sought to bridge the mainstream with the darkside. And anyone who has used Facebook (and misses MySpace) can attest that the darkside is remorsefully absent on FB. So now is a better time than ever to launch. In fact, with the incredible API that hubs like Facebook have created, the labor involved with producing this version of KN.com is significantly less. Then with my pro-level knowledge of web, building an iPhone or Droid version would totally manageable.

So I can't wait. If granted my leave-of-absence, it will be KN.com on which I focus most of my energy. Of all my ventures, I still feel this is the most likely to create monetary freedom for my preferred creative endeavors. The time is actually better now than it was five years ago for this idea to launch.

That is where my life is at. I work my ass off. I've really been blessed with a huge opportunity of self-awareness. Although that experience initially has been nothing but sorrow and regret at what I've forsaken, I am coming to grips with the decisions I made and forgiving myself. My face is aging terribly, so I've been spending a lot of my energy relaxing & resculpting my facial expressions so that they match better my true sentiments. I used to rely entirely on youth and charm, believing these things were necessary to make people like me or to have my way with people. It wasn't even true, but regardless, I have mostly lost both of those things (charm I hope to revive someday), so I practice contentedness and expecting nothing of people. I like where I live. I moved WAY WAY WAY too much as a kid and never got a chance to get my bearings and strike my own course. Now I'm settling. Not in a way that feels like a life-sentence, just chilling until I'm ready to go somewhere new, or life presents an opportunity to change. I'm a stoner in my free time, which sometimes I am ashamed of - but when I stop smoking, although my head does clear, I tend to get so uptight and mental that I give myself migraine headaches and injuries. It sounds laughable because so many people play the "medical necessity" angle, but for a personality like me, wildly emotional, swinging high and low, weed sort of relegates that swing to the right time and context, ie, after work. I've done the whole trip. I've worked at companies where it was ok to be stoned at work - that sucked. I've worked at companies that it was required to be stoned - that really sucked. I've known and know people who are stoned 24/7, and I know I am not those people. I have my dosage worked out, it really feels like practice managing moods and tendencies which if left to simmer in the bg end up exploding in my face. Honestly, I quite sure ciggies do me more harm. Weed's negative is that it fuddles the mind. But then again, that is also it's greatest benefit. If you are the type to believe that everything in life is to be achieved via the rational intellect, then I have nothing to say to you. Personally, I believe everything in life is achieved via the Spirit, the mind is just a witness. And in my case, a happy'n'high witness. Bob Dylan says, "People ask me why I'm drunk all the time? Well cuz it eases my mind! I ease down the road, stroll, and sing, I see better days and I do better things." Ya'll know it's true - you get the most exercise when you drunk. ADMIT IT.

So that's it - I get pretty damn lonely sometimes, but I counsel myself that clearly I have proven not only to ya'll, but to myself: I am my generation's ARTIST character. This is my role. Show me another mother fucker with my type of talent who could pass on so many gorgeous and loving women and the rich lives they offered me - you can't do it. I earned this position in the pantheon, and now I intend to live the dream.

peace and carrots

greg