music and dance

i spent the last 45 minutes dancing to my reclaimed vinyl coursing through my headphones and liquidancing all around the basement. isa was playing a computer game. i had forgotten how much i love electronic music and dance. i had for so long relinquished my love for electronic. i had given up. i realize now that this was due to the fact that i had ceased to dance to it. i think that the human component is essentially missing from electronic until you put it back in there with your body. flowing and bending to the beats revived in me a sensation and love for the dance, a feeling that i had been unknowingly missing and mourning. i feel so free and full of life, a motion that does not cease, and which bubbles forth with the vitality of youth. i feel like i am nineteen again, pulsing my body to a beat at a party with trippy light shows falling down the walls, and psychedelics plying my brain with ecstatic visions and sensations. i do not miss the nastiness of those times, but i am remembering the joy and the life.

dream

i was hanging out with sean and his family on a sofa in front of a restaurant, or something. we were chatting and watching the scenery. another sean, from earlier in the dream, who was a pothead, came up behind us to talk to me. i introduced him, and we were all mildly amused at the two sean factor [not a first, yet more unlikely than two joshuas]. the pothead sean started singing a little song about marijuana, and how 'marijuana pays for everything,' implying that he sold it. sean's dad went a particularly vivid shade of red and stared off into space, as my friend sean was laughing the kind of laugh that implied that he wouldn't mind buying some. i cleared my throat, and told pothead sean to bug off.
later, with my old boss, bob, i was relating the story to him. we had walked into his garage. every surface in it was covered in this off-white fake (or perhaps real) large grain leather (think cheap leather couch), including his explorer, inside and out. he began donning a suit made of the same material, with a shirt and tie to match. remarkably, i did not comment, i simply took this sort of thing to be normal behavior. i was saying to bob, 'i just couldn't believe he would be so disrespectful in front of his parents.'

dream

I was roller skating up a street. It was kind of like a video game. I kept having to read meters, but also defend myself against attackers. Once I found my car, I drove. At one point, I had to stop. A zombie rose up out of the ground and walked around to the driver's side. I couldn't roll my window up, and the zombie started attacking me. I was able to keep it back until I could get the window up, which chopped off some of the zombie's fingers. Later, I was roller blading fast after I got something that I needed from this mall place, and I was being chased by a roller blading gang. I wasn't afraid of them, but I moved quickly to get away.

dream

Some friends and I were driving to Evansville after some things happened that I cannot remember. We drove through a swamp, at the edge of which, were the water truly began, was a causeway. It was a rather new causeway, and strange, too, as it was curvy and twisty, rather than straight. As we neared the edge of the swamp, we stopped. We exited the car to have a look around. It was quite a beautiful swamp, as these things go, and we saw large green frogs everywhere, some as big as dogs. I was a little creeped out by this, as I generally don't like slimy things, but they seemed benign and content to just sit and do frog stuff. We could see Evansville across the water. There was a building that looked like an art deco government building, tallish and thin. I knew that it had been recently built. It exploded. I commented, 'Did they build that just to blow it up?' 'Yeah,' someone answered, 'I think it was for a movie.' Evansville's downtown was a lot more developed than in actuality. We continued into Evansville, and as we did, I said, 'You know, the one thing I've never liked about Evansville is the architecture. It is so bland.' There were murmurs of agreement from around the car.

dream

my wife and i had been doing something [can't remember] together, and decided to sit down at this table to eat. it seemed to be in a park. we had been there a few minutes, talking to ourselves, when i noticed the group of people to my left. first, i saw jason and anders with whom i went to elementary school through high school. it was a fairly large group, so i continued around the circle. there was emily, shanon, and dan, amongst many other faces that did not stand out.

it dawned on me that they were having a high school reunion. i couldn't believe it. i stood up and walked over and said, 'hey everybody, it's me, joshua. i am so glad to see all of you.' they all murmured their appreciation at my attendance, some half-hearted, but i didn't care, i was too happy to see all of them. 'i had no idea you guys were doing this, i just happened to be here with my wife.' so, we pulled up a seat.

the dream transitioned to dan's house which was nearby. we were all milling about and in various stages of sitting and standing. i saw shanon and introduced her to jaymi. there were actually two versions of shanon there. one from when we were young, and a seemingly older one. i felt peace with her, finally, and a happiness that i was there with jaymi.

i looked up high school, and reunion in a dream dictionary and found that (roughly) it signifies the incorporation of the qualities of these people into my personality. a process i had begun to suspect after the 20th dream about shanon. i can remember a point at which i became isolated from these people early in life, in elementary school. i was never happy about this, but did not know what to do. i realize now, that it was my own doing, and to embrace them is to embrace myself.

the block rock

i was playing with my daughter's wooden blocks tonight and realized that i feel like a far more creative person than i did when i was younger. at one point i stopped to look at what i was building and thought, 'how interesting, i never thought that i would see myself build something like that.'

when i was a child, it was all right angles. i can remember the thing that i used to build with my legos. it was based on a very small piece of flat green lego, that any lego user would be familiar with. it was probably 40-50 nubs in length and 25-30 in width. i would build, deconstruct, and rebuild the exact same thing over and over, and it was this: four walls made of interlocked [brick-style staggering] blocks. for the first two years that i had my og primitive lego set, this is what i created.

looking at my latest efforts in wood block, i am staggered by how much i have changed. i never thought outside of the box when i was young. i would buy lego sets when i was old enough to earn some spending money, and build them according to the instructions. i never greatly altered them. i might make some slight modifications to the occasional set, but never did i change the underlying structure of the set.

on the whole, i think this spells greater happiness for me. i feel so much more free and unlimited in my new way of thinking. my childhood was, in retrospect, very much about doing what i was told, but more specifically, doing what i was told was possible. i see so much more of the world from this more expanded viewpoint, and i am the better person for it.

diet and the new human

i feel that it is time to begin, in earnest, my research and work on diet, with particular regard to brain development and activity. i have put it off long enough. it is time that we slough off the twinkies and potato chip fast food mentality that is keeping us in shackles. our nervous system needs cultivating, and these inferior sources of energy (i cannot bring myself to refer to them as food) must cease if we are to continue our evolution.

yoav and tori

last night my wife and i went to see tori amos perform. the tickets had been expensive, but she is a huge fan, so i didn't mind. i have come to appreciate tori in my own way, so i was eager to go as well. what i was wholly unaware of was the opening act - yoav. it had been so long since i had been to see live music performed that i had almost forgotten about opening acts. he walked on stage and took his place, front and center behind a large array of pedals. he had only an acoustic guitar. he didn't say anything. he tapped one of the pedals and started banging a beat out on the body of his acoustic. he stopped, but the beat kept going, looping - he had sampled himself and was laying a track to sing on top of. i couldn't believe it, and looked to see if my wife was appreciating this. she, of course, was. he laid a few more sounds down. one track was a rhythm, supplemental to the original beat. another was a bodiless wail sung into the opening of his guitar, for atmosphere. finally, yoav began singing. he did not disappoint.

yoav's lyrics are a hopeful yet melancholic complement to his driving, etheric music. at times it reminded me of the very best of club music, a pounding challenge to get up and dance, to move. and it all came out of a guitar.

after playing two or three songs without comment he stopped to introduce himself. yoav was born an israeli, grew up in south africa, and has lived in london amongst many other places. his accent is beautiful, but difficult to understand at times, so i think that i can say that no one in the entire theatre understood what his name was until they saw it on the ep that twenty percent rushed out to buy at intermission.

i was among the twenty percent, as i was smitten. i had sort of taken my time getting down to buy it, and by the time i did the line was absurd. whatever, i thought, i'm only missing boring intermission musical fare. as i was standing in line, yoav came out. he seemed to be looking for someone or something, and i kept staring hardcore at him, as he is beautiful in a very rough way. i felt a kinship with him, but was powerless to speak. i was still shut up in myself that night.

i felt, in particular, that he embodied the sort of soul that i have been called to throughout my life. the sort of person who defies social norms and customs in favor of higher flavor and existence. a richness of character is present in these folk, and i have only met a few my age. i had ceased to consider myself a part of this, though, and felt only shame at looking at him. shame for not having done something so wonderful with myself. i am realizing that i am still quite young.

seeing this man perform, and then his presence in the lobby was yet another milestone in my unfolding. today, i took one giant leap further.