princiblog
i've decided to for whatever reason write down a series thoughts/principles/beliefs/guidelines to my head and way of life, some of which you've maybe heard me mention before, some of which may surprise. but all of these mentionables are pretty important to me in the current frame.
-as a general rule and without thinking about it specifically, i tend to stay on close terms with friends and people who naturally assume the best of my intentions, and conversely do not stay close with or in contact at all with people who will assume bad things about my intent. if there is a circumstance wherein i seem to do something that is unexpected or not easily explained and the communication has dropped for a bit without me being able to convey the logistics, a friend in this world will in the meantime work explanations in their head that assume that it was beyond my control and that there is a perfectly reasonable explanation for the behavior or lack thereof. a person who was not really meant to be close to me on the other hand, will assume that i must not care or i can be put in a box or i am 'just not the person they thought i was.' and maybe i'll grant them that.
-contrary to popular belief, i'm here to let you in on a little nugget of truth from someone who has firsthand experience with living in many different places, and who will testify with total conviction: there exists absolutely the SAME AMOUNT OF RACISM IN THE NORTH AND THE SOUTH. yes, it might manifest differently, but i will say that anyone who has ever had some smug little bit of self-righteousness that they are from a northern state and were lucky enough to live within a more open-minded environment that wasn't in the confederate south is simply living a misinformed lie.
-i believe that most all time spent doing anything can be loosely broken down into two categories: CREATING and CONSUMING. any person can form whatever reasons for categorizing certain activities into either, for themselves, but i can for myself generally know if my mind/the world around me is being fed by what i engage in or not. that said, i attempt to live in a way that more than 50% of each day is spent creating rather than consuming.
-out from my lifetime of observation, i seem to notice absolutely no neccesary correlation between WEALTH and HAPPINESS. i have seen just as many decidedly unhappy wealthy people as i have seen people who live very humbly but who live in a fairly constant state of happiness and gratitude. that said, it amazes me how obsessed culture at large seems with beating a seeming correlation between the two into our heads. (and of course i acknowlege the exception being the extreme side of the povery spectrum, but i am mostly talking about prioritization of what one spends his or her life living for..)
-an observation about the people in this world to which i seem to gravitate: i am much more interested in being involved with people who live in a state of CURIOSITY rather than those in a state of JUDGEMENT. if you haven't even lived a third of your life yet and you can already classify, box up, and know what you think already about what someone is telling you, what a movie is going to be, what a band sounds like, what someone probably is like, etc. then you apparently aren't too interested in taking in and learning tons more from the nectar of life, and i wish you luck in your fulfillment.
-i hate the concept of what a REPUBLICAN is. that said, i hate the concept of what a DEMOCRAT is. thomas jefferson warned us about it more than two hundred years ago and it's still true folks: bipartisan politics simply suck. expecting everyone to be serviced by a system which endorses the power of only two parties is like expecting two huge clothing companies to meet the fashion needs of everyone in the entire country.
-some days i feel as though i have had the privelage of knowing some of the most beautiful humans who even exist.
-it is no groundbreaking revalation to realize: THE MUSIC INDUSTRY IS IN CRISIS, in unison with the completely postmodern, twenty-first century, age of technology. having said that, i will be the first to acknowlege that the very same amount of great music is being produced as always was. it is simply becoming a very different beast to go acquire it, to make it, to learn it, to experience it firsthand, and to be involved at all in creating a business around it. musicians: to live in a creative capacity is a simple input:output principle-- you simply cannot create great music unless you take in a constant backdrop of great live music, great recorded music put into every day, and immersing yourself in the skin of the great artists who came before you. this means learing their songs and learning why they just work.
-i have no nice way to put this, and don't really feel the need to sugar-coat it: i have every reason to believe that within any population of human beings, there will always exist the same amount of stupid people. you may believe that there is one privelaged enlightened place or group of people in history or segment of the populus that has it right and that breeds an enlightened way of life, and you may believe in the concept of 'book smart,' 'academic communities,' 'tribes of spiritual perfection,' 'unfortunate underprivelaged' et al.. but the fact remains that within any populus or community there exists the same amount of raw material for intelligence and the same amount of people who are able to handle big ideas in capacity and the same amount of people who have the ability to do big and great things in this world (and conversely, the same amount of people who may show every indication on tests and 401k stats that they are a smart agile asset to their community but really do little more than populate and pollute.)
thanks if you were willing to spend the time to get this far. comments surely welcome of course.