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blog (blÅg)

“On a Web site, a blog, a short form for weblog, is a personal journal that is frequently updated and intended for general public consumption. Blogs generally represent the personality of the author or the Web site and its purpose. Topics sometimes include brief philosophical musings, commentary on Internet and other social issues, and links to other sites the author favors. The essential characteristics of the blog are its journal form, typically a new entry each day, and its informal style. The author of a blog is often referred to as a blogger. People who post new journal entries to their blog may often say they blogged today, they blogged it to their site, or that they still have to blog.”

So why, you ask, do I have this blog? It all started back in 2000 when I made an album. I thought I should have a website. Around this time, blogging started becoming popular and since I knew some people in it, I had to jump on the bandwagon. I would post little daily trinkets and keep track of how my songs were ranking on a few indie music websites. In July of 2000 I had my first â€œofficialâ€ blog.

Over the next year, the blog became my focal point of the site. I didnâ€™t know what I was doing and I didnâ€™t know why, but I wanted to become a part of this growing blogging community.

The site has gone through many physical transitions since then. The blog was put on the front page, the design and layout changed many times, my level of brutal honesty dwindled as more people were exposed to it. Now itâ€™s something different.

Now, I use my blog for a few reasons. I use it as a documentation for myself. To know when things happened. I use it to help discover myself and help others discover me. I think, though, that my main motivation to continue blogging is in hopes I will write something or share something that inspires someone else. I enjoy helping others to see things in a different light. Of course, as time goes on, I use the blog less and less. So there’s less and less reason for me to keep it — other than to browse around my past.

I hope while you are browsing through the main page and perhaps through some of the archives, you will react with more than a blank face. I hope something strikes you and if it does, I always like to read peopleâ€™s comments on the blogs.

As for me, well…

It would be easy for me to sit here and type away a fantastic description of myself… but I won’t. What you would like to know about me lies in between the lines. So I’ll make this simple.

I am 41 years old, living on my own in the suburbs of Philadelphia. Married, I am not, but I look forward to the day I am. Children, I have none, though I look forward to the day I do. I think I want to move to a place totally unlike this. I just don’t know where because I’ve not traveled much at all.

The music I listen to means something to me. It has to.

Tool, A Perfect Circle, Laura Marling, Tally Hall, Fiona Apple, and Sarah Slean make up 80% of my listening habits.

Though I haven’t written anything in a while, I do play piano, sing, and write music. I made an album when I was 20 and another one when I was 38. You can learn about them here.

I love graphic design and acting. The Carpeted Wall is another site of mine, rarely updated, detailing my portfolio of design & graphic artistry. I am finally beginning to pursue drama, an untapped love I’ve had since senior year of high school. I’m currently trying out the waters of community theater.

I strive for such things as passion, personal freedom, and enlightenment. I’ve found these things in the music I listen to and in such films as “American Beauty” and “Fight Club”.

I have a hole in my sock.

CREDITS

All design, artwork, & music on this site is by me unless otherwise noted. I use Photoshop and Dreamweaver, but now that this is powered by WordPress, I barely have to do anything anymore.

And now for something completely different…

“A Poem”

He always wanted to say things. But no one understood. He always wanted to explain things. But no one cared. So he drew.

Sometimes he would just draw and it wasn’t anything. He wanted to carve it in stone or write it in the sky. He would lie on the grass and look up in the sky and it would be only him and the sky and the things inside that needed saying.

And it was after that, that he drew the picture. It was a beautiful picture. He kept it under the pillow and would let no one see it. And he would look at it every night and think about it. And when it was dark, and his eyes were closed, he could still see it. And it was all of him. And he loved it.

When he started school he brought it with him. Not to show anyone, but just to have it with him like a friend. It was funny about school. He sat in a square, brown desk like all the other square brown desks and he thought it should be red. And his room was a square, brown room. Like all the other rooms. And it was tight and close. And stiff.

He hated to hold the pencil and the chalk, with his arm stiff and his feet flat on the floor, stiff, with the teacher watching and watching. And then he had to write numbers. And they weren’t anything. They were worse than the letters that could be something if you put them together. And the numbers were tight and square and he hated the whole thing.

The teacher came and spoke to him. She told him to wear a tie like all the other boys. He said he didn’t like them and she said it didn’t matter. After that they drew. And he drew all yellow and it was the way he felt about morning.

And it was beautiful.

The teacher came and smiled at him. “What is this?”, she said.

“Why don’t you draw something like Ken’s drawing?”

“Isn’t it beautiful?”

It was all questions.

After that his mother bought him a tie and he always drew airplanes and rocket ships like everyone else. And he threw the old picture away. And when he lay out alone looking at the sky, it was big and blue and all of everything, but he wasn’t anymore. He was square inside and brown, and his hands were stiff, and he was like anyone else.

And the thing that needed saying didn’t need saying anymore.

It had stopped pushing.

It was crushed. Stiff.

Like everything else.

–Anonymous