Back to the Future

Things have been getting interesting for me this Winter.  I've had time to work on the domestic side of life.  Making my house homey, or as homey as my tastes can allow.  having the winter break helped. I also had time to watch a few movies, and listen to a lot of music, from artists I'd lost track of over the last 10 or so years, only to find I'm really pleased with their development.  It's strange to grow up, and realize just how young I was when I got into a lot of this stuff, and the weight of the things I was into, that the artists I took and interest in spoke on.  It seems so foreign now, that person I was.  I used to write about how Memory was the cornerstone of Identity.  To forget was to lose yourself.  In a way, to learn is to augment memory via perspective, and in a way, leave your old self behind.  And then like acid reflux that old self resurfaces, and you can totally see it coming.

Today I watched something on http://www.pitchfork.com on their tv channel.  Daytripping with GZA & Son.  If I did the math right, GZA's kid is 20 or 21!  He looks a lot younger than that.  GZA hasn't really aged, just a stray gray in his beard.  They played tracks from Liquid Swords, and I still get geeked up off those tracks.  They played a few tracks off Wu-Tang Forever, and it was right on time, cause for the last month I kept thinking about GZA's Shout-Out in the liner notes of that double CD. I loved it, and of course, and was feeling it during the holiday season.  Of course his shout out was coarse & succinct, "F a Shout Out!"

Maybe this is what happens when I don't have to put on my big boy clothes and go to work for 2 & a half weeks, stay up all night, or starve myself all day while I work on music or home improvement projects?  Revisiting all those contemplative and angsty artists I vibed with, that are still angsty and testing my comfort zone and ability to justify my convictions may have the effect of reviving those things in myself, or at least reaffirming the choices that compelled me to remove those voices from a position of influence on me.  Time will tell, but I can feel the angst. I might just have an Occupy MY Street Protest, where I go work on my yard and rake up all those dead sticky gumballs the wind blew down the other day.

No matter what, one thing that has changed above all is, now I am in a home I control, subject to my debts and whatever ordinances apply to me at any given time.  That changes everything.  What I do there sticks, until I or some force of nature changes it.  It's a surreal feeling to not be transitory any more, to actually settle into my surroundings (i'm notorious for waiting months, if not years, to hang art/ decorate) and know, God willing, I will be there for me, and by the grace of God I won't be moving once I'm done with whatever it is I'm in the process of doing.  I'm just living these days, and that's Hella Good.