Schmorgishborg

http://myspace.com/somebodysomewhere

Boxes

Love, love, love,
listen closely
Cuz I'll only say this once

Love, love, love
is a bold thing
it is something I've never touched

I am a man who gets quite lonely
and I only blame myself
Cuz I spent my life making money
and it's never been enough

Cuz we all know...

That we live inside these boxes
hoping someone will open us up
And we tell ourselves
that we know too well
than to open ourselves up

So
La, la, la, la
La, la, la, la
La, la, la ,la
La, la, la, la

(I know that part might ruin the song, but I love it. It's so quirky and experimental and unpredictable.)

Run, run, run
till your legs ache
then watch the world rotate around

But we all spin at the same pace
and our heads don't ache at all
We are a race that keeps on running
till we find someone who knows
the tyrant that lives inside our rib cage (meaning...the heart)
the dictator below
Cuz we all know

That we live inside these boxes
hoping someone will open us up
And we tell ourselves that we know too well
than to open ourselves up

So...
La, la, la, la
La, la, la, la
La, la, la, la
La, la, la, la
...

Ok so the last part is kind of long, but whatevuh.
it's just an experimental song... i'm not putting my entire musical career (if we indeed call it that) upon this song, but it was fun. All of the instruments are real, and no, i wasn't drunk when I recorded it.

And now is the part of the blog where Isaac comes out and shares his little insight into what this song really means.
Hello, Isaac.

So i thought this one was pretty self-explanatory, but whatevuh. I'll explain anyway.

You know what's funny about humans? We spend our entire lives trying to find somebody who will love us, despite who we are and what we do, but are super hesitant to show anybody who we really are.

For example: :)
Say you're five years old.
"I'm five years old."
No, you dummy head. I mean pretend that you're five years old.
"I'm pretending that I'm five years old."
Very good. Now pretend that you have this awesome toy that you love with all your heart. It's sort of a part of you. You relate yourself with it because you've loved it and spend time with it ever since you were born. This toy is in a box, and you don't let anybody see it, because you know that they'll be repulsed by what it looks like. After all, it is a shredded up, drooled on, one-eyed, teddy bear (Did i not mention that part?). But your number one desire in life is for someone else to be able to love your one-eyed teddy bear just as much as you. What a dilemma. You want other people to love your teddy bear, but you don't want anyone to see it.
"That's not a very big dilemma."
You're a friggin five year old! These things matter to you, alright. Anyway, my main point is this.
This is what real grown up people do with their entire lives. We're all shredded up, drooled on, one-eyed teddy bears, due to all of the mistakes we've made and all of our faults. And we're all conscious of this fact. And our number one desire in life is for someone to be able to love us, despite all of our drool and one-eyed-ness, and faults. To love us because we are us. But at the same time we're so terrified to show anybody our real ugly selves, because our greatest fear is to be know, inside and out.

And this is one of the greatest dilemma's in human history.
And this is what Boxes is about.

The drunken Englishman chorus of La, la, la, la, really serves no purpose beyond the fact that it's fun to sing along with. Perhaps I shall record this song again, excluding the Englishmen.

Bands I Never Thought I'd Listen To Again

I've found that blogging every day due to a brutal New Year's Resolution really takes it out of you. Your creative edge becomes a little less sharp; you stop paying attention to details. You get fat and slow and ugly, like a spoiled in doors cat.
This is why I have decided to purposefully break my NYR (totally against my nature, I know (Jk, Jk. Lol? (Joking, Joking. Laugh Out Loud?))). Writing needs to be sporadic for me-- something done on my watch, on my time. Which, my writing isn't that flavourful anyway, so maybe I'm flattering myself to an absurd extent to think that this will make much difference either way.

My visit to Pennsylvania has reached its flowery end, with a marble box of ashes on a lonely counter in a lonely corner, a seal on it bearing the name Senior Master Sergeant, James Arnold Bradley, surrounded by a tightly folded American flag and a navy blue Air Force hat that was once his.

At the funeral, it wasn't the nice words about my Grandpa or the sincere prayers that got me. It was the French Horn that played that simple melody right after the twenty-one gun salute. I don't know what the tune is called, but it was beautiful-- a tune only played for men with legacies, probably.

Pennsylvania's behind me now, bearing lots of memories inside its borders. Now, I'm back in Bowling Green, listening to a band that I never thought I'd listen to again: Dashboard Confessionals. He has new stuff now, and some of it is actually very beautiful (some of it is just the pathetic emo crap again, but whatevuh...).

January 14, 2010

I feel bad about my last blog, and I'm not sure why. I feel like I shouldn't have written any of that stuff down, about my grandpa and his state. I honestly hate seeing him like this-- literally hate. Somebody so full of life being claimed by a hospital bed, shivering beneath three or four hospital sheets. It's inhumane and it makes me sad.

I wish death didn't exist. I wish we could live forever. But we can't.

You remember what I said in my last blog? "This is death: It takes the strongest of men and breaks them, the most beautiful of women and makes them hideous, the sharpest of men and makes them hopelessly forgetful."
Well, I forgot something. There are things that death can never affect. 


Death cannot affect the truly happy man. That kind of man is happy even when bad things happen-- death cannot touch him.


Anyway...

On Death

I sang for him today. Just me and my guitar, singing softly. Very softly. Frank Sinatra, the Beatles, some of my songs. My voice was just a feeble whisper, but still loud enough, I hope, that he might've heard me. His eyes were half open, but I knew he couldn't see me. His mouth was gaping, two teeth protruding into visibility, the rest probably gone.

If someone hadn't told me that this was my grandpa, the ukelele playing war veteran, I wouldn't have recognized him. His jaw was shrunken, his cheeks pointing sickly out onto the pillow, and his skin yellowy and dead, speckled with feeble white hairs all over his jaw.

Death is ugly and tragic. C.S. Lewis said it best: "The ugliest living person in the world looks like an angel compared to the prettiest dead person." Or something like that. I don't remember.

This is death: It takes the strongest of men and breaks them, the most beautiful of women and makes them hideous, the sharpest of men and makes them hopelessly forgetful.

There is no way except one to escape it. To escape it, we must die. Then, we will never experience Death and its decay ever again.

January 9, 2010

Death is a scary thing. It's one of the biggest mysteries in the world-- what REALLY happens afterwards? Nobody really knows. Sure... we believe things, I believe things, but nobody really knows for an actual scientific fact that there is indeed a life after death or a heaven or a hell or a purgatory or whatever.

And since Death is such a great mystery, you would think that people would spend most of their lives trying to figure out things about it. But the irony is, nobody ever thinks about it. We spend our entire lives, day by day, working towards that one fateful day of Death, but live as though we will live forever.

The only people who pay attention to Death are those whom Death touches.

I am paying attention to death because I know someone who will soon taste it.
My grandpa is eighty-nine years old and has been spending that last three years waiting for his deathbed. Now, he and most everyone else is convinced that that he will soon take his last breath in that deathbed. It could be today or next Friday, but it will be soon-- at least that's what all the nurses say, and they know more about deathbeds than anybody.

Tomorrow we leave out for Pennsylvania to comfort my grandpa's family... and ourselves. I'd like to say goodbye to him. He won't remember me-- he's way too lost in confusing memories and blurs in his past to remember his grandson that really never spent much time to get to know him.

I never knew my grandpa well, and I've never regretted it until now, now that I won't have a grandpa to get to know anymore.

And this is why I need to say goodbye to him. It's not for him-- it's for me. I need to feel like I cared about him enough to say goodbye to him and that I care for him. And this all needs to happen before he dies.
I'm not sure if I'll miss him or not. He played the ukelele for me and told me stories about his tour through Italy during World War Two. Ever since I remember he's been hunched, wrinkly, and white. To think that he wasn't always like that. I wish I could have heard more stories, or let him teach me more songs on the piano and ukelele. But that won't happen anymore.

Death is tragic.

Nature- Henry Wadsworth Longfellow

AS a fond mother, when the day is o’er,
Leads by the hand her little child to bed,
Half willing, half reluctant to be led,
And leave his broken playthings on the floor,
Still gazing at them through the open door,
Nor wholly reassured and comforted
By promises of others in their stead,
Which, though more splendid, may not please him more;
So Nature deals with us, and takes away
Our playthings one by one, and by the hand
Leads us to rest so gently, that we go
Scarce knowing if we wish to go or stay,
Being too full of sleep to understand
How far the unknown transcends the what we know

Sick- A poem by Shel Silverstein (These poems are meant to be read aloud)"

"I cannot go to school today,"

Said little Peggy Ann McKay.

"I have the measles and the mumps,

A gash, a rash and purple bumps.

My mouth is wet, my throat is dry,

I'm going blind in my right eye.

My tonsils are as big as rocks,

I've counted sixteen chicken pox

And there's one more-- that's seventeen,

And don't you think my face looks green?

My leg is cut, my eyes are blue--

It might be instamatic flu.

I cough and sneeze and gasp and choke,
I'm sure that my left leg is broke--

My hip hurts when I move my chin.

My belly button's caving in,

My back is wrenched, my ankle's sprained,

My 'pendix pains each time it rains.

My nose is cold, my toes are numb,

I have a sliver in my thumb.

My neck is stiff, my voice is weak,

I hardly whisper when I speak.

My tongue is filling up my mouth,

I think my hair is falling out.

My elbow's bent, my spine ain't straight.

My temperature is one-o-eight.

My brain is shrunk, I cannot hear,

There is a hole inside my ear.

I have a hangnail, and my heart is-- what?

What's that? What's that you say?

You say today is... Saturday?

G'bye, I'm going out to play!"

Brooms Don't Last Forever

While preparing to do my janitorial duties for today, I enter the basement staircase to grab my broom. As my fingers touch the plastic handle, it hits me.

These brooms won't last for ever.

This job won't last for ever.

I'm leaving in five months, and once I go, things will never be the same.
I won't be on the "inside" of Binimea anymore. I'll be an outsider, left with only the memory of once being on the inside.

Am I ready for this?

EP

I have another resolution:

I will come out with an EP by the end of this year.

Songs are in the making.

Hummm

The city is humming with its usual hum, and my cool Japanese light is glowing in its green Japanese way. I'm sitting cross-legged on my unmade bed in my unmade bedroom, jeans, t-shirts, and underwear strewn about in every which way, guitars discussing their favorite chord progressions in a silent corner. Everything is as it should be in my life. At least, thank goodness, for now.

School begins tomorrow. Five months more of this business and I'll be shipped off to college. Is this a good idea? Quite possibly. I'll be majoring in English Literature , with a focus in teaching English as a second language. But who knows? Odds are, I'll end up quitting school and heading over to Hillsong College in Sydney, Australia. Awesome? Yes.

I want to be done with school.

Monday, January 4, 2010

I've studied for three tests in the last two days. One in Chemistry, one in U.S. Government, and one for World Studies.

I take the tests tomorrow.

I don't remember anything.

Wish me luck-- my gosh i need it.

I need to study

The Word of the Day is:


Constitutional: A walk taken for one's health. Noun.


For Example: Kerensky was, I imagine, on his usual morning constitutional.


Verse of the Day:
Teach us to realize the brevity of life,
      so that we may grow in wisdom  Psalms 90:12


Brevity- shortness of time or duration; briefness: the brevity of human life.


In other words, "Teach us to realize just how short and delicate my life is, that I might be wise enough to trust You with it."

So This Is The New Year

Resolutions seem to make up this holiday that we've created. Right after watching on tv the "ball drop" in New York City, there was a plethora of commercials about making yourself better. Subway with their "eat better resolution." Geico with their "save more money on your car insurance" resolution. Avalon with their "look more beautiful resolution."

The New Year is just an excuse for man to start over. Right when that clock turns twelve, we can hit the restart button on our lives and everything that we had done and messed up on simply gets lost in the vagueness of a time so foreignly known as 2009.

As for me... well, as cheesy as it sounds, God's love is my New Years.
It's more than an excuse for me to start over-- it's a reason. The only reason to learn to do things the right way. And I love it. Every time we experience God's grace, we get to hit the restart button, with God making himself completely oblivious to the fact that "last year" we messed up terribly.

The New Years is my favorite holiday, I think, because it says a lot about my life. It says that restarting things and making new resolutions isn't a bad thing. And you can never have too many of them. Heck... humanity's made two thousand and ten new starts in this world, along with four thousand something years before that.

I have a resolution for 2010 and it is this:
I shall journal ever day. It could be a paragraph, a sentence, a word, a drawing, a happy face or a frowny face. Something. Anything to show how I feel or what's going on in my life or just whatever.
And it could be anywhere. On this blog. In my journal (what a novel idea), on a random piece of paper. But I have to save everything.

This is my resolution. My new start.
Happy New Year