Small Mind, Large Universe

the_shaw @ 2008-10-07T01:19:00

2008-10-07T08:22:35Z

this will be my last post on livejournal ever. i mean, i hardly post at all, ever, anyways, but at one point this was a very important medium of expression for me. now its time to grow the fuck up and start learning to live in a world that is becoming increasingly less safe and homogenized. everything is changing very quickly, for me, and i assume for all of us. take care, and give me a call. 415.879.1411

the_shaw @ 2008-06-26T12:41:00

2008-06-26T19:41:58Z

A crow took off over the meadow in flight
nearly sideswiped our ruby kite
you dropped the string
chased it this way and that
until it sang its hymn to the wind

My friend dug a hole
To bury emerald thoughts
He didn't tell me what it was
But I know he held it close once
A gold watch in the snow
A little luck and the spring will show

Sailing on a bridge over a sapphire of sea
Our parents had it hard
But at least they felt the soil beneath their fingers
Well now their tired bodies linger
Like feathers on the water
Waiting to be carried under

Well I heard something about
Some hurricane town
Where the people called for help
Their diamond eyes on the horizon
Staring at the edge
just watching the waves crash around

the_shaw @ 2008-04-23T13:19:00

2008-04-23T20:19:32Z

my dog is going to be put to sleep tonight/tomorrow

:(

the_shaw @ 2008-04-15T06:30:00

2008-04-15T13:35:32Z

so i hate to brag or something, and most people who read this will just think i'm a name dropping asshole... well, i need a place to write these things down.... and brag a little bit. okay, a lot.

the past four days have been eventful. we met jamie stewart. we played a show with dan boeckner of wolf parade in his sideproject, the handsome furs, and it went well. we have another one in 12 hours. we might be playing with mgmt (not very likely) and/or fiery furnaces (more likely), but definitely a show with wolf parade to support their record next time they come to town.

the_shaw @ 2007-11-27T06:44:00

2007-11-27T14:54:11Z

i have been having recurring dreams about zombies, a night or two a week for a few weeks. this one was pretty scary, although it all felt influenced by a movie... like 28 days later. i feel like you feel after you've seen a zombie horror flick and you're trying to go to sleep, but all you think about is how they are coming.

i've never had nightmares, but my dreams have been very turbulent recently. lots of earthquakes. a couple of tidal waves. homes on the beach. shacks in the woods, a lot of violence and craziness. there was a particular house a few nights ago that was incredible. it felt very real, and quite foreign to any connection that i can see now.

before the zombie madness i was dreaming that you had gone off with someone else, and i think what made the zombies so scary was that i felt alone, while everyone else was oblivious to this impending threat.

the_shaw @ 2007-11-26T09:05:00

2007-11-26T17:06:09Z

http://dictionary.reference.com/browse/theory

YES

2007-11-20T11:36:23Z

so that lady who's living here?

she might be moving into my room on the first.

which means i get my deposit back, and i get to move into a space at soundwave on the first without any money lost in between.

FUCK YEAH

More 2012 Fun

2007-11-18T14:47:09Z

Delegations from hundreds of nations will be meeting in Bali, Indonesia in two weeks to start hammering out a global climate agreement to succeed the Kyoto Protocol, the current climate change treaty. The first phase of the Kyoto Treaty expires in 2012.

"It's extremely clear and is very explicit that the cost of inaction will be huge compared to the cost of action," said Jeffrey Sachs, head of Columbia University's Earth Institute. "We can't afford to wait for some perfect accord to replace Kyoto, for some grand agreement. We can't afford to spend years bickering about it. We need to start acting now."

He said that delegates in Bali should take action immediately where they do agree, for example, by public financing for demonstration projects on new technologies like "carbon capture," a "promising but not proved" system that pumps emissions underground instead of releasing them into the sky. He said the energy ministers should start a global fund to help poor countries avoid deforestation, which causes emissions to increase because growing plants absorb carbon in the atmosphere.

Although the scientific data is not new, this was the first time it had been looked at together in its entirety, leading the scientists to new emphasis and more sweeping conclusions.

But even as the IPCC was working toward its conclusions over the past several years, a steady stream of even more alarming data has come in.

"The IPCC is a five-year process and the IPCC is struggling to keep up with the data - we are all being inundated with new evidence and new science," said Hans Verolme, director of the Global Climate Change Program at the conservation organization WWF.

"And the new science is saying: 'You thought it was bad? No it's worse.' "

The IPCC chairman, Rajendra Pachauri, an engineer and economist from India, acknowledged the new trajectory. "If there's no action before 2012, that's too late," Pachauri said. "What we do in the next two to three years will determine our future. This is the defining moment."

He said that since the IPCC began work on its current report five years ago, scientists have recorded "much stronger trends in climate change," like a recent melting of polar ice that had not been predicted. "That means you better start with intervention much earlier."

"If you look at the scientific knowledge things do seem to be getting progressively worse," Pachauri said later in an interview. "So you'd better start with the interventions even earlier. Now."

seriously

2007-11-18T11:02:39Z

GTFO

this is what's coming up...

2007-11-15T11:36:23Z

Paired Studio Sessions (Full Band):
Tracking: & Overdubing:
Day/Date Time Location Day/Date Time Location
Tue 1/8 12pm-8pm SSL6K Studio & Thu 1/10 12pm-8pm SSL6K Studio@

the_shaw @ 2007-10-30T05:57:00

2007-10-30T12:58:10Z

my shitty movie:

the_shaw @ 2007-10-21T02:17:00

2007-10-21T09:17:59Z

Oh, my love--
Lets kiss, and remember how to forget again

Lets forget about our stupid mouths and
Speak, gentle almond eyes to deep ocean eyes

Then, let us forget our stupid eyes and
Study Braille-skin with sweaty fingertips

Then, let us forget our stupid fingers and
Embrace each other with burning tongues

Then, let us forget our stupid tongues and
Taste the sweetness of the air with our ears

And finally, let us forget our stupid ears (and stupid fears!) and
Grin at each other through the softest dark

i have not read over this yet, not complete

2007-10-15T10:47:16Z

It has been a long time since I sat down to write anything of substance. That I can live with the sentences that compete to spew out of me, that I can acquiesce to my subconscious for a minute and consciously stand by it upon reading, that I can be held responsible for the plot of your literary masterpiece, oh what audacity is boiling up in me? Do you realize the risks you are taking, my love? The time you are wasting, when you could brush up on your classics, or practice your music, or write a letter to a faraway friend! But no, instead you choose to dip your pen into my ink. I am enormously grateful for your faith.

We both must have, at some point, looked up at Moon and seen the reflection of millions of lonely eyes off of her porous cheeks and silver hair. Perhaps she is not spotlighted by Sun as science presumed, but by the burning glass of the hopeful audience with us among them, sitting quietly in their seats, staring, gaping, longing. Maybe there are long silk strings that bend with the light, and when you reach for your fork I lay back in a chair, and when you fall down I raise my arms and lift you up by the wrists, and we are connected in such a way that we are puppets to each other’s thoughts like to fragments of a larger, more profound soul, and if the relationship we have should work out it is because there is a perfect and universal amount of give and take, and we are merely mannequins, strung along for the entertainment of some invisible voyeur.

We live in a time that puts up a facade to hide from itself, among people who are mired in the filth and dirt of the cities that support them. Every breath is a choice to live fully, but for now we do nothing with our awareness of something beyond concrete day jobs but curl up in warm balls and write strings of letters about strings in letters. I have never striven for anything, significantly. I have practiced, and practiced, and practiced, but I have never actually made a great work of art, written a great story or recorded a great song. All that I think I know, and I have not lived for a single minute! Our music, our stories, our poetry, our love. These things are my birth. Their completion is my pregnancy. Their continuation is my infancy. Their mastery is my adulthood.

How do we go about changing the world? It has only been through social action, bolstered by art and literature, that any great change has ever been made in the world. Our generation has been left with a cultural void-- a white canvas, if you will, and it feels to me like the bigger canvas is still largely unmolested, that a lonely painter or two could cast the right stroke of her brush and paint millions of faces with it. This is not a rhetorical complication. We are intelligent thinkers on the forefront of a new idea, aware of our impending doom, determined to change the course of our planet! This is a math problem in high school, with a definition solution, and what we are experiencing now are the arduous steps towards the solution. It must be there! If there is no answer, if we are truly meaningless, then why do we try so hard?

I hope I never again let my pen elaborate on how fucked up our world is, for it has been elaborated on by many for a longtime, and as long as we are focused on what is and not what can be we will never find ourselves looking both ways properly at intersections. Where our world falls short we shall embellish with fantasy. We must journey to frigid peaks and scorching valleys to find simple truths to our answers.

I promise you that within my arrogant idealism there is a profound sense of humbleness that I feel, as though my soul has escaped his asylum, only to burn his heels on a scorching summer beach, aimlessly fumbling with a single black domino and staring at a monolithic wave approaching. If we are revolutionaries now, we shall only be slightly ahead of our time, and if we wait for the storm then we shall be tiny drops of ice in the howl. When we find our collective self in Antarctica there shall be nobody sitting down, waiting to freeze to death, who has not already fallen into the ice.

I am a man of deals, my love, and I would like to make one with you. If you would read this all, in order, word for word, never forward or backward, and judge it as a thoroughly incomplete documentation of a young man’s search for love then I shall be just one letter ahead of you, feeding you a meat trail of subplots and details that lead to an intersection I cannot see, since my back is quite turned. And when I am about to back into an oncoming bus I hope that you will pull me to the curbside just in time and kiss me passionately to remind me how beautiful everything is.

There is a ticking clock on our rationality of five years. If it cannot be done in that time, then we shall abandon our idealism and return to our boring lives and our misery and our loneliness. But if it can be done, than we will have proven that we mattered and that we were loved, if not by each other than by the world that clings to or feet like a massive tumor.

Before we can talk of burning cities, we must learn how to make the kind of fire that spreads.

the_shaw @ 2007-10-06T11:35:00

2007-10-06T18:36:16Z

Recording Session for Planets:
Mon 11/12 8pm-4am

the_shaw @ 2007-10-01T10:06:00

2007-10-01T17:08:18Z

vacations to your lover's house, endless beatles covers, 5 new original songs, progress made in school and a new radiohead record coming out in 10 days.

life is amazing.

the_shaw @ 2007-09-30T04:04:00

2007-09-30T11:04:43Z

she leaves with soft words
lovely September leaves, please
fall on my window

awkward universe
look at them laughing at us
we're laughing at them

good music carries
the burden of obsession
the desire for truth

harmonious chords
play her hands passionately
she likes to play mine

the_shaw @ 2007-09-20T01:58:00

2007-09-20T09:03:25Z

Talking to my roommate, who is a Mayan Shaman, is kind of interesting. She showed me a little bit about I Ching. We talked about the current changes of things... I feel like this is a time of an end to old ways, and the beginning of something new. I feel reborn... not just because of this amazing love, but also because I feel like I am tackling problems in my life in a way I never would have before. My last experience as a roommate made me realize how fucking immature and incapable I was. Now though, things are better. I'm handling it. I'm managing my money. Things are so simple and beautiful, when it comes down to it. The only thing missing is a plane ticket to France.

I want to go. More than anything. I will die if I don't get to spend Christmas with you. My homegirl KP told me about this site: http://www.studentuniverse.com -- round-trip ticket to Paris, $800. Maybe I can sell some gear and a kidney or something. If I live cheap and skim some of my allowance and try and get some cash for Christmas, I might be able to pull it off!

I checked out the trymango.com site posted on indiefucks, and its fucking awesome. phonetically: Zdrastvuytye. kak vashi dila? The "Zd" is tough, but sweet! I'm learning to annunciate. I should probably just study the Spanish really hardcore, so I can at least better than you at something :-P

the_shaw @ 2007-09-17T01:18:00

2007-09-17T08:25:34Z

no amount of diaretic masturbation could satisfy the full beauty of today. but the highlights would include peaking during built to spill, a most amazing ferris wheel ride at sunset while spoon started and a surprisingly intimate night with a sober but very hoarse isaac brock, who i will have to admit puts on a pretty damn good show.

i feel.. awakened. or recharged. its nice.

the_shaw @ 2007-09-14T16:59:00

2007-09-15T00:00:02Z

finally done with that stupid fucking class. now, onto the good stuff! intermediate recording and production 2!

the_shaw @ 2007-09-14T12:03:00

2007-09-14T19:04:53Z

most of my "new" material is actually just really old stuff that i'd completely forgotten about.

the_shaw @ 2007-09-12T18:25:00

2007-09-13T01:26:09Z

waking up today = crazy inexplicable body high

so i took a couple of stems to see if that would put things back to normal.

it didn't.

the_shaw @ 2007-09-12T04:20:00

2007-09-12T11:28:05Z

hello, love.

i talked to theo about the idea of filming everything and doing a video blog sort of deal on youtube. he said it was a really good idea, and its something he wanted to do with bunny, and he's thinking about seeking out video interns and running a production company of sorts, in the house. quite interesting and possibly lucrative, although i don't know how long i want to stay in this house. honestly, the energy is good and maybe the best thing would be to get a practice space. no, the best thing would be for us to move in together and get a space to practice adjacent, but we're definitely not ready for something like that. no, i'm afraid you're going to have to deal with the cats for a while.

well, if you're okay with all of my crazy ideas for how to try and go about this thing, then i will move ahead with figuring out how it can be done.

oh, and bring your polaroid camera when my face heals!

and don't question why i'm up at 4:30 when i need to be up at 8:30. >_>

the_shaw @ 2007-09-11T22:21:00

2007-09-12T05:23:47Z

so this is what its like to live out one's dreams.

i feel like the boy who finally catches the girl on the playground and doesn't know what to do with her...

start playing shows, i guess.

i mean really. could it get much better?

well, a keyboard would be nice...

the_shaw @ 2007-09-06T09:17:00

2007-09-06T16:19:43Z

sing like you talk.

i need to get that tattooed on my arm or something so that i can see it every minute of every day.

the_shaw @ 2007-09-02T10:21:00

2007-09-02T17:25:49Z

What to do, what to do. Drive to marin I guess, crash somewhere. Think about things. Hopefully I don't get sick. Practicing the songs through will be the biggest improvement, for sure. Once I have an idea of where the melodies sit, I won't have to dedicate so much brainpower to bullshitting and thinking about timing. On the other hand... baring my soul to the world is refreshing. Being shot down brings a certain element of freedom to the writing process, if one doesn't take it too hard. For now, I am happy with the writing, and now its about finding the strong melodies, practicing the parts and nailing the takes. I think the best kind of compliment is the "wow, you got good." That gets me. The voice is by far the hardest instrument. But I'll have it.