Today I Learned
The Rolling Stones, when they were young, were really, really thin.
But who doesn't know that?
Besides, it's uninteresting.
You try to be interesting but the result is the opposite. It would be better if you didn't try so hard.
Other people are interesting without trying. You're false.
Your falsity causes you to struggle desperately hard to be genuine.
But the effort is transparent, and a failure.
Like other areas of your life.
Failure permeates your life like veins.
Etc.
posted by La Misma at 4:33 PM
5 Comments:
The "etc." at the end is PRICELESS. Are you bummed these days or did you just get carried away with your theme?
I'm okay-ish but sometimes things are so rough that it's hard to stay un-bummed.
LV
5:48 AM
I have been quite bummed, but this post is a riff on 'judgmental voices' which I just read yet another self-help book about.
The approach is rather zen. (vacuous, are you out there?) The author tells you not to 'engage' with your judgements -- don't argue, don't defend, don't try to replace the negative thoughts with positive ones. Instead, notice how your own judgment makes you feel. Notice all the physical sensations. Quietly explore them. Eventually the raging storm of self-criticism and -defense subsides and makes way for the sadness connected to the first experience of this judgment -- when you were little, from your terrible parents. Then, you rejoin your present life.
It's all based on the idea that this noisy superego side of you takes you out of the present moment.
I thought it was quite insightful and am trying to use some of the exercises but it's very hard. Because it's a break from such entrenched patterns. Still, onward and upward. My critical voices are in constant overdrive, I have GOT to find a way to stop them.
8:37 AM
Oops - I forgot to comment on your own bummedness! Sorry to hear things have been rough. The brutal heat makes everything harder, too. I hope you're wearing your cute summer outfits because those make everyone who see them more cheerful. (Hopefully you, too.)
Sometimes when I'm glumsville I remember you saying to me, "It's summer. You should be getting your leg over." That makes me smile.
11:00 AM
One thing I learned about the rolling stones when I was like 23 or so is that they weren't as always as incredibly lame as they came to be. They wrote some pretty great songs when they were young. But I grew up thinking of them and Aerosmiith as one and the same. FWIW, what happened to the Rolling Stones is the same thing that happened to DeNiro, Nicholson, and Pacino.
9:53 PM
Quite a bravura and risky set of statements here, beckett. I actually am old enough to have always known the Stones wrote some really good songs. So there! But there was always something slightly slippery and untrustworthy about them.
A boyfriend of mine defined it thus: he said all the Trotskyists at Columbia were into the Stones (that was a putdown).
Though, who did he think cool people were into? Stalin? Gulp. He was much older than me, I didn't question his statements (which were also bravura and risky).
12:37 PM
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