Loss and Find — II – OPEN DOOM CRESCENDO

Grab hold and don’t let go. While this transience passes.
While the soul-switches flip on.
What creative expression means. At least to me.

If I attest this through the people
and things that move me most—I can maintain
why I need to actuate what I may myself give.

While I have time in this space of certainty that finds moments between faith-purgatory.
For the future self that hurts to remember at a given moment
that eventual timelessness is the temporal destination.

ii: Dan Barrett

I know Dan Barrett. This may come as substantiated shock to some faint-of-subtlety being that I’ve only referenced him / his work on average 3 out of every 8 writings give or take concerning the existential battlefield of life itself. Before this immediately spirals into hyperbole, I think it’s important that we all have a sense of hum

Euh, .. . K I’m gonna keep this one brief. Or not. Probably. Scroll down to find out, cause I sure don’t know as I real-time type this part 2. I passed out writing the final section on Zack Snyder’s Justice League and that’s not a spoiler cause really anyone who cares about the virtue of our popular culture needs to be present in this definitive moment in history, so I hope your work week is coming along well cause again you have until Thursday to psychologically-physically prepare. I regained consciousness so my commitment to this piece is equal [interrupts himself] you already know why I’d write about Dan Barrett. You’d also know if you weren’t a hater that I’d have nothing to gain from braggadocioing like some piece of shit fan inflating off the fact that he’s in touch with another human person. If you’re like my international brother Leonardo then you as we know that to know a famous person who’s as down-to-earth as a person-famous-or-not gets is simply an opportunity to gain another empathetic perspective. This so to make sense of a fudged world where empathy always seems like some mysterious novelty humans with consciousness conveniently refuse to concurrently tap into.

If you want an emotional dissertation of how Dan Barrett’s work has given to my ability to contextualize reality and the will to partake in it then rewind to the relatively acclaimed Holiday Sorrow novella or way further back to What we want / All we have cause I don’t feel like plagiarizing then suing myself.

Because this entry is clearly more ghetto stream of consciousness, I’m just gonna write the rest of this piece as if any which relevant parts of the aforementioned earlier publishings are fresh in your mind. I’m not gonna cause I embarrass myself and there’s not enough time before Thursday.

So, thoughts on my personal map:Things I wanna be, things I wanna do.So first, I wanna stop suffering so much.Uh, I think I caused myself a lot of suffering.And, I think the way to do that is to be present-focused.To really work on emotional reactivity,and to be focused on the present,and really aware of my own emotions,my own feelings, my own boundaries,and to be compassionate with others,but firm in enforcing those boundaries.And I think that’s really what I -the core of what I wanna be is;The sense of, inner-calm, inner-strength.Being compassionate but firm with my own boundaries.And understanding that…I definitely wanna be physically strong.I definitely wanna be in really good shape,physically strong, capable of challenging myself, and I, I…Um, I think challenge…are big keys to really being happy…so the idea of that being…to enjoy life…but having this challenge…solving complicated problems…I think that should…is key to appreciating and admitting it…physically strong, having a challenge, an emotional challenge, a personal challenge…and structuring yourself around meeting those challenges…structuring your day to meet those challenges…that’s a big key…and then I think, curiosity…depends a lot on curiosity…curious about the world, reading and learning…and writing…are absolutely…I need to be able to learn…like what’s going on there?..what’s it like to work there?..being curious about…while life is developing…So the big keys, I think, for me, are…reactivity… presence of mind…I just have to, I think, the sense of challenge…the challenge… the sense of curiosity…and I think I’m… and understanding that…so, having things to look forward to and anticipate;having things that I know are complete disconnection periods…and I think if I can nail those things— [copy-pasted from reddit]
Choir Of Assholes / You Think It’ll Make You Happy But It Won’t [no moon, 2020]

For the record I respectfully don’t agree with the person who interpreted this song as an end to the era of Dan’s internal suffering. If anything—and in fashion with his signature touch of self-aware irony [not the hipster kind; the self-deconstructionist]—if anything there is a level of futility to intellectualizing one’s way through suffering. It’s apparent enough in a song where the repeated wailing over this seminar-like sample is an unconvinced “You just have to get over it”. But I know where Dan’s coming from. From a combo of what he does off-music scene and my personal knowing of him, I know. And just as what Dan expresses will consistently search for catharsis, that catharsis as reflected of existential volatility will always feel at transient reach at best.

So now why is this coming off like the most negative happy birthday blog post ever, no not cause I want it to read like how the music sounds. In canon with the running theme of this two-thirds-week-long series, something may be found in the depths of loss. It’s not something you deliberately seek to unlock, cause to assume you gotta be in pain to be sexy and stuff just makes you the appropriating hipster or self-hating narcissist. No it’s something any which one of us would have to find if we’re a) not already fundamentally screwed and b) within reasonable pragmatic capacity to reach for it. But unless you’re in a medieval fantasy and all your problems get solved by a sword that drops to you from the sky [you catch it in this fantasy not it impales you] then you like anyone else are at the disproportionate consequence of the cosmos, spontaneously ordained fate, and proverbial-if-not-physiological planes landing on top of you from the sky. And in this scenario none of us can catch a plane.

Yet as much as Superman Returns is a nostalgia-bloated piece of shit fossilfest and dread of despair is an almost definite cyclical pattern regardless how woke or enlightened one presumes themself to be, equally cyclical—if temporal—is the chance at catharsis. Which is why Dan’s work and life has meant as much as it does to me. I can’t speak for the others, given people’s personally-subjective experiences with pain. But unlike the inevitable demographic that’ll misuse deep-dive deconstructions of darkness as permission to propagate darkness, I will forever be defined by the uncompromised hope that is found from the ruins of necessary nihilism.

So despite how much Dan at the time of reading this if he does cause this is admittedly really long, despite how much Dan is in a space to embrace this very emotionally-elaborate birthday greeting—I leave it here cause it matters just as much to iterate, then reiterate, and again—round and round—

—that darkness will cave in again. And light will be there in the cracks.

Happy Birthday Dan |m|